He therefore converts into a paint-factory what at first was a warehouse for storing up foodstuffs; and with his chalk-like uric pulp he lavishly daubs his belly, which turns a creamy white, and smears it on his forehead, his face, his cheeks, until they assume the appearance of old ivory. All those parts, in fact, which lie immediately under the translucid skin are covered with a layer of pigment which can be turned into murexide and is identical in nature with the white powder of the adipose lace.

Biological chemistry can hardly offer a simpler and more striking experiment than this analysis of the Decticus' finery. To those who have not this curious Grasshopper handy, I recommend the Ephippiger of the Vines, who is much more widely distributed. His ventral surface, which also is of a creamy white, likewise owes its colour to a plastering of uric acid. In the Grasshopper family many other species of smaller size and requiring more delicate handling would give us the same results in varying degrees.

White, slightly tinged with yellow, is all that the urinary palette of the Locustidae shows us. A caterpillar, the Spurge Hawk-moth's, will take us a little farther. Dappled red, black, white and yellow, its livery is the most remarkable in our part of the country. Reaumur in fact calls it la Belle. The flattering title is well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress.

Let us dissect the caterpillar and apply the lens to its mosaic. On the inner surface of the skin, except in the portions coloured black, we observe a pigmentary layer, a coating here red, there yellow or white. We will cut a strip from this coat of many colours, after depriving it of its muscular fibres, and subject it to the action of nitric acid. The pigment, no matter what its hue, dissolves with effervescence and afterwards yields murexide. Here again, then, it is to uric acid, present, however, in small quantities in the adipose tissue, that the caterpillar's rich livery is due.

The black parts are an exception. Unassailable by nitric acid, they retain their sombre tint after treatment as before, whereas the portions stripped of their pigment by the reagent become almost as transparent as glass. The skin of the handsome caterpillar thus has two sorts of coloured patches.

Those of an intense black may be likened to dyers' products: they are completely impregnated with the colouring matter, which is part and parcel of the molecular constitution and cannot be isolated by the nitric solvent. The others, red, yellow or white, are actually painted: on a translucid sheet is a wash of urinary pigment, which is discharged by the minute ducts issuing from the adipose layer. When the action of the nitric acid has ceased, the transparent circles of the latter stand out against the black background of the former.

Yet one more example taken from a different order. As regards elegance of costume, the Banded Epeira[6] is the most highly favoured of our Spiders. On the upper surface of her corpulent belly alternate, in transversal bands, bright black, a vivid yellow like that of yolk of egg and a dazzling white like that of snow. The black and yellow also show underneath, but arranged differently. The yellow, in particular, forms two longitudinal ribbons, ending in orange-red on either side of the spinnerets. A pale purple is faintly diffused over the sides.

[Footnote 6: Cf. The Life of the Spider: chaps. ii., vii., xi. and xiii.—Translator's Note.]

Examined from the outside with the lens, the black parts reveal nothing out of the common. The black is homogeneous and everywhere of equal depth. On the other hand, in the coloured portions, we see little polygonal, granular masses, forming a close-meshed network. By cutting round the circumference of the abdomen with a pair of scissors, the horny integument of the dorsal surface may readily be removed in one piece, without any shreds of the organs which it protected. This large strip of skin is transparent in the zones that correspond with the white bands in the natural state; it is black or yellow on the black or yellow bands. These last indeed owe their colouring to a layer of pigment which the point of a paintbrush will easily loosen and remove.

As for the white bands, their origin is this: once the skin has been removed, the dorsal surface of the abdomen, whose graceful mosaic is not in any way disturbed, reveals a layer of polygonal white spots, distributed in belts, here densely and there less so. The denser belts correspond with the white bands. It is their magnificent opaque white granulations which, seen through the transparent skin, form the snow-white stripes in the live Spider.

Treated with nitric acid on the microscopic slide, they do not dissolve nor produce effervescence. Uric acid then is not present in this case; and the substance must be guanine, an alkaloid known to be the urinary product of the Spiders. The same is true of the yellow, black, purple or orange pigment that forms a coating under the skin. In short, by utilizing, in a different chemical combination, the waste products of animal oxidization, the magnificent Spider rivals the magnificent caterpillar; she beautifies herself with guanine as the other does with its uric acid.

Let us abridge this dry subject; let us be content with these few data, which could if necessary be corroborated by many others. What does the little that we have learnt teach us? It tells us that the materials rejected by the organism, guanine, uric acid and other dross from life's refinery, play an important part in the coloration of the insect.

Two cases are distinguishable, according as the colour is dyed or simply painted. The skin, itself colourless and transparent, is in places illumined by a coloured varnish, which can be removed by a touch with a paintbrush. Here we have paint, the result of the urinary compound laid on the inner surface of the covering, just as the chromatic ingredients of our glass-painters are laid on our stained-glass windows.

At other places the skin is coloured in its very substance; the colouring-matter forms an integral part of it and can no longer be swept away with a camel-hair brush. Here we have a dyed fabric, represented in our windows by the panes of coloured glass which the crucible decorates uniformly with this or that tint, by means of the incorporated metallic oxides.

Whereas, in these two cases, there is a profound difference in the distribution of the chromatic materials, is this true of their chemical nature as well? The suggestion is hardly admissible. The worker in stained glass dyes or paints with the same oxides. Life, that incomparable artist, must even more readily obtain an infinite variety of results by uniformity of method.

It shows us, on the back of the Spurge Caterpillar,[7] black spots jumbled up with other spots, white, yellow or red. Paints and dyes lie side by side. Is there on this side of the dividing line a paint-stuff and on the other side a dye-stuff, absolutely different in character from the first? While chemistry is not yet in a position to demonstrate, with its reagents, the common origin of the two substances, at least the most convincing analogies point to it.

[Footnote 7: The caterpillar of the Spurge Hawk-moth.—Translator's Note.]

In this delicate problem of the insect's colouring, one single point thus far comes within the domain of observed facts: the progressive advance of chromatic evolution. The carbuncle of the Dung-Beetle of the Pampas suggested the question. Let us then inquire of his near neighbours, who will perhaps enable us to advance a step farther.

Newly stripped of his cast-off nymphal skin, the Sacred Beetle possesses a strange costume, bearing no resemblance to the ebony black which will be the portion of the mature insect. The head, legs and thorax are a bright rusty red; the wing-cases and abdomen are white. As a colour, the red is almost that of the Spurge Caterpillar, but it is the result of a dye on which nitric acid has no effect as a detector of urates. The same chromatic principle must certainly exist in a more elaborate form and under a different molecular arrangement in the skin of the abdomen and the wing-cases which will presently replace white by red.

In two or three days the colourless becomes the coloured, a process whose rapidity implies a fresh molecular structure rather than a change of composition. The building-stone remains the same, but is arranged in a different order; and the structure alters in appearance.

The Scarabaeus is now all red. The first brown stains show themselves on the denticulations of the forehead and fore-legs, the sign of an earlier maturity in the implements of labour, which are to acquire an exceptional hardness. The smoky tinge spreads more or less all over the insect, replaces the red, turns darker and finally becomes the regulation black. In less than a week the colourless insect turns a rusty red, next a sooty brown and then an ebony black. The process is completed; the insect possesses its normal colouring.

Even so do the Copres, the Gymnopleuri,[8] the Onites, the Onthophagi and many others behave; even so must the jewel of the pampas, the Splendid Phanaeus set to work. With as much certainty as though I had him before my eyes at the moment when he divests himself of his nymphal swaddling-bands, I see him a dull red, rusty or crimson, excepting on the wing-covers and the abdomen, which are at first colourless and presently turn the same colour as the rest. In the Sacred Beetle this initial red is followed by black; the Phanaeus replaces it by the brilliance of copper and the reflections of the emerald. Ebony, metal, the gem: have they the same origin here then? Evidently.

[Footnote 8: Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. viii.—Translator's Note.]

The metallic lustre does not call for a change of nature; a mere nothing is enough to produce it. Silver, when very finely subdivided by the methods whereof chemistry knows the secret, becomes a dust as poor to look at as soot. When pressed between two hard bodies, this dirty powder, which might be dried mud, at once acquires the metallic sheen and again becomes the silver which we know. A mere molecular contact has wrought the miracle.

Dissolved in water, the murexide derived from uric acid is a magnificent crimson. Solidified by crystallization, it rivals in splendour the gold-green of the Cantharides. The widely-used fuschine affords a well-known example of like properties.

Everything, then, appears to show that the same substance, derived from urinary excretions, yields, according to the mode in which its ultimate particles are grouped, the metallic red of the Phanaeus, as well as the white, the dull red and the black of the Sacred Beetle. It becomes black on the dorsal surface of the Stercoraceous Geotrupes and the Mimic Geotrupes; and, with a quick change, it turns into amethyst under the belly of the first and into copper pyrites under the belly of the second. It covers the back of Cetonia floricola with golden bronze and the under surface with metallic purple. According to the insect, according to the part of the body, it remains a dingy compound or sparkles with reflections even more vivid and varied than those possessed by the metals.

Light seems irrelevant to the development of these splendours; it neither accelerates nor retards them. Since direct exposure to the sun, owing to the excess of heat, is fatal to the delicate process of the nymphosis, I shaded the solar rays with a screen of water contained between slips of glass; and to the bright light thus moderated in temperature I daily, throughout the period of chromatic evolution, subjected a number of Sacred Beetles, Geotrupes and Cetoniae. As standards of comparison I had witnesses of whom I kept some in diffused light and others in complete darkness. My experiments had no appreciable result. The development of the colours took place in the sunlight and in the dark alike, neither more rapidly nor more slowly and without difference in the tints.

This negative result was easy to foresee. The Buprestis emerging from the depths of the trunk in which he has spent his larval life; the Geotrupes and the Phanaeus leaving their natal burrows possess their final adornments, which will not become richer in the rays of the sun, at the time when they make their appearance in the open air. The insect does not claim the assistance of the light for its colour chemistry, not even the Cicada,[9] who bursts her larval scabbard and changes from pale green to brown as easily in the darkness of my apparatus as in the sunlight, in the usual manner.

[Footnote 9: Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. i. to v.—Translator's Note.]

The chromatics of the insect, having as its basis the urinary waste products, might well be found in various animals of a higher order. We know of at least one example. The pigment of a small American lizard is converted into uric acid under the prolonged action of boiling hydrochloric acid.[10] This cannot be an isolated instance; and there is reason to believe that the reptilian class daubs its garments with similar products.

[Footnote 10: A. B. Griffiths, Transactions of the Academie des sciences, 26 November, 1894.—Author's Note.]

From the reptile to the bird is no great distance. Then the Wood-pigeon's iridescent hues, the eyes on the Peacock's tail, the Kingfisher's sea-blue, the Flamingo's carmine are more or less closely connected with the urinary excretions? Why not? Nature, that sublime economist, delights in these vast antitheses which upset all our conceptions of the values of things. Of a pinch of common charcoal she makes a diamond; of the same clay which the potter fashions into a bowl for the Cat's supper she makes a ruby; of the filthy waste products of the organism she makes the splendours of the insect and the bird. The metallic marvels of the Buprestis and the Ground-beetle; the amethyst, ruby, sapphire, emerald and topaz of the Humming-bird; glories which would exhaust the language of the lapidary jeweller: what are they in reality? Answer: a drop of urine.



CHAPTER XI THE BURYING-BEETLES: THE BURIAL

Beside the footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind has thrown a tiny unfledged bird from its nest. What will become of these little bodies and so many other pitiful remnants of life? They will not long offend our sense of sight and smell. The sanitary officers of the fields are legion.

An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon the odour attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the same time, the flattened Silpha,[1] the glistening, slow-trotting Cellar-beetle, the Dermestes,[2] powdered with snow upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus,[3] all, whence coming no one knows, hurry hither in squads, with never-wearied zeal, investigating, probing and draining the infection.

[Footnote 1: Or Carrion-beetle.—Translator's Note.]

[Footnote 2: Or Bacon-beetle.—Translator's Note.]

[Footnote 3: Or Rove-beetle.—Translator's Note.]

What a spectacle, in the spring, beneath a dead Mole! The horror of this laboratory is a beautiful sight for one who is able to observe and to meditate. Let us overcome our disgust; let us turn over the unclean refuse with our foot. What a swarming there is beneath it, what a tumult of busy workers! The Silphae, with wing-cases wide and dark, as though in mourning, flee distraught, hiding in the cracks in the soil; the Saprini,[4] of polished ebony which mirrors the sunlight, jog hastily off, deserting their workshop; the Dermestes, of whom one wears a fawn-coloured tippet flecked with white, seek to fly away, but, tipsy with the putrid nectar, tumble over and reveal the immaculate whiteness of their bellies, which forms a violent contrast with the gloom of the rest of their attire.

[Footnote 4: The Saprinus is a very small carnivorous Beetle. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. xvi.—Translator's Note.]

What were they doing there, all these feverish workers? They were making a clearance of death on behalf of life. Transcendent alchemists, they were transforming that horrible putrescence into a living and inoffensive product. They were draining the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous.

Others will soon put in their appearance, smaller creatures and more patient, who will take over the relic and exploit it ligament by ligament, bone by bone, hair by hair, until the whole has been restored to the treasury of life. All honour to these purifiers! Let us put back the Mole and go our way.

Some other victim of the agricultural labours of spring, a Shrew-mouse, Field-mouse, Mole, Frog, Adder, or Lizard, will provide us with the most vigorous and famous of these expurgators of the soil. This is the Burying-beetle, the Necrophorus, so different from the cadaveric mob in dress and habits. In honour of his exalted functions he exhales an odour of musk; he bears a red tuft at the tip of his antennae; his breast is covered with nankeen; and across his wing-cases he wears a double, scalloped scarf of vermillion. An elegant, almost sumptuous costume, very superior to that of the others, but yet lugubrious, as befits your undertaker's man.

He is no anatomical dissector, cutting his subject open, carving its flesh with the scalpel of his mandibles; he is literally a grave-digger, a sexton. While the others—Silphae, Dermestes, Cellar-beetles—gorge themselves with the exploited flesh, without, of course, forgetting the interests of the family, he, a frugal eater, hardly touches his find on his own account. He buries it entire, on the spot, in a cellar where the thing, duly ripened, will form the diet of his larvae. He buries it in order to establish his progeny.

This hoarder of dead bodies, with his stiff and almost heavy movements, is astonishingly quick at storing away wreckage. In a shift of a few hours, a comparatively enormous animal, a Mole, for instance, disappears, engulfed by the earth. The others leave the dried, emptied carcass to the air, the sport of the winds for months on end; he, treating it as a whole, makes a clean job of things at once. No visible trace of his work remains but a tiny hillock, a burial-mound, a tumulus.

With his expeditious method, the Necrophorus is the first of the little purifiers of the fields. He is also one of the most celebrated of insects in respect of his psychical capacities. This undertaker is endowed, they say, with intellectual faculties approaching to reason, such as are not possessed by the most gifted of the Bees and Wasps, the collectors of honey or game. He is honoured by the two following anecdotes, which I quote from Lacordaire's[5] Introduction a l'entomologie, the only general treatise at my disposal:

"Clairville," says the author, "reports that he saw a Necrophorus vespillo, who, wishing to bury a dead Mouse and finding the soil on which the body lay too hard, went to dig a hole at some distance, in soil more easily displaced. This operation completed, he attempted to bury the Mouse in the cavity, but, not succeeding, he flew away and returned a few moments later, accompanied by four of his fellows, who assisted him to move the Mouse and bury it."

[Footnote 5: Jean Theodore Lacordaire (1801-1870), author of Genera des coleopteres (1854-1876) and of the work quoted above (1837-1839).—Translator's Note.]

In such actions, Lacordaire adds, we cannot refuse to admit the intervention of reason.

"The following case," he continues, "recorded by Gleditsch,[6] has also every indication of the intervention of reason. One of his friends, wishing to desiccate a Frog, placed it on the top of a stick thrust into the ground, in order to make sure that the Necrophori should not come and carry it off. But this precaution was of no effect; the insects, being unable to reach the Frog, dug under the stick and, having caused it to fall, buried it as well as the body."[7]

[Footnote 6: Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch (1714-1786), the German botanist.—Translator's Note.]

[Footnote 7: Suites a Buffon. Introduction a l'entomologie, vol. ii., pp. 460-61.—Author's Note.]

To grant, in the intellect of the insect, a lucid understanding of the relations between cause and effect, between the end and the means, is to make a statement of serious import. I know of scarcely any more suited to the philosophical brutalities of my time. But are these two anecdotes really true? Do they involve the consequences deduced from them? Are not those who accept them as sound evidence just a little too simple?

To be sure, simplicity is needed in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, a mental defect in the eyes of practical folk, who would busy himself with the lesser creatures? Yes, let us be simple, without being childishly credulous. Before making insects reason, let us reason a little ourselves; let us, above all, consult the experimental test. A fact gathered at random, without criticism, cannot establish a law.

I do not propose, O valiant grave-diggers, to depreciate your merits; such is far from being my intention. I have that in my notes, on the other hand, which will do you more honour than the story of the gibbet and the Frog; I have gleaned, for your benefit, examples of prowess which will shed a new lustre upon your reputation.

No, my intention is not to belittle your renown. Besides, it is not the business of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows facts. I wish simply to question you upon the power of logic attributed to you. Do you or do you not enjoy gleams of reason? Have you within you the humble germ of human thought? That is the problem before us.

To solve it we will not rely upon the accidents which good fortune may now and again procure for us. We must employ the breeding-cage, which will permit of assiduous visits, continuous enquiry and a variety of artifices. But how to stock the cage? The land of the olive-tree is not rich in Necrophori. To my knowledge it possesses only a single species, N. vestigator, HERSCH.; and even this rival of the grave-diggers of the north is pretty scarce. The discovery of three or four in the spring was as much as my hunting-expeditions yielded in the old days. This time, if I do not resort to the ruses of the trapper, I shall obtain no more than that, whereas I stand in need of at least a dozen.

These ruses are very simple. To go in search of the sexton, who exists only here and there in the country-side, would be nearly always a waste of time; the favourable month, April, would be past before my cage was suitably stocked. To run after him is to trust too much to accident; so we will make him come to us by scattering in the orchard an abundant collection of dead Moles. To this carrion, ripened by the sun, the insect will not fail to hasten from the various points of the horizon, so accomplished is he in detecting such a delicacy.

I make an arrangement with a gardener in the neighbourhood, who, two or three times a week, makes up for the penury of my two acres of stony ground by providing me with vegetables raised in a better soil. I explain to him my urgent need of Moles in unlimited numbers. Battling daily with trap and spade against the importunate excavator who uproots his crops, he is in a better position than any one to procure for me what I regard for the moment as more precious than his bunches of asparagus or his white-heart cabbages.

The worthy man at first laughs at my request, being greatly surprised by the importance which I attribute to the abhorrent animal, the Darboun; but at last he consents, not without a suspicion at the back of his mind that I am going to make myself a gorgeous winter waist-coat with the soft, velvety skins of the Moles. A thing like that must be good for pains in the back. Very well. We settle the matter. The essential thing is that the Darbouns reach me.

They reach me punctually, by twos, by threes, by fours, packed in a few cabbage-leaves, at the bottom of the gardener's basket. The excellent fellow who lent himself with such good grace to my strange wishes will never guess how much comparative psychology will owe him! In a few days I was the possessor of thirty Moles, which were scattered here and there, as they reached me, in bare spots of the orchard, among the rosemary-bushes, the strawberry-trees and the lavender-beds.

Now it only remained to wait and to examine, several times a day, the under-side of my little corpses, a disgusting task which any one would avoid whose veins were not filled with the sacred fire of enthusiasm. Only little Paul, of all the household, lent me the aid of his nimble hand to seize the fugitives. I have already said that the entomologist needs simplicity of mind. In this important business of the Necrophori, my assistants were a small boy and an illiterate.

Little Paul's visits alternating with mine, we had not long to wait. The four winds of heaven bore forth in all directions the odour of the carrion; and the undertakers hurried up, so that the experiments, begun with four subjects, were continued with fourteen, a number not attained during the whole of my previous searches, which were unpremeditated and in which no bait was used as decoy. My trapper's ruse was completely successful.

Before I report the results obtained in the cage, let us stop for a moment to consider the normal conditions of the labours that fall to the lot of the Necrophori. The Beetle does not select his head of game, choosing one in proportion to his strength, as do the Hunting Wasps; he accepts what chance offers. Among his finds some are small, such as the Shrew-mouse; some medium-sized, such as the Field-mouse; some enormous, such as the Mole, the Sewer-rat and the Snake, any of which exceeds the digging-powers of a single sexton. In the majority of cases, transportation is impossible, so greatly disproportioned is the burden to the motive-power. A slight displacement, caused by the effort of the insects' backs, is all that can possibly be effected.

Ammophila and Cerceris,[8] Sphex and Pompilus excavate their burrows wherever they please; they carry their prey on the wing, or, if too heavy, drag it afoot. The Necrophorus knows no such facilities in his task. Incapable of carting the monstrous corpse, no matter where encountered, he is forced to dig the grave where the body lies.

[Footnote 8: Cf. The Hunting Wasps: chaps. i. to iii.—Translator's Note.]

This obligatory place of sepulture may be in stony soil or in shifting sand; it may occupy this or that bare spot, or some other where the grass, especially the couch-grass, plunges into the ground its inextricable network of little cords. There is a great probability, too, that a bristle of stunted brambles may be supporting the body at some inches above the soil. Slung by the labourer's spade, which has just broken his back, the Mole falls here, there, anywhere, at random; and where the body falls, no matter what the obstacles, provided that they be not insurmountable, there the undertaker must utilize it.

The difficulties of inhumation are capable of such variety as causes us already to foresee that the Necrophorus cannot employ fixed methods in performing his task. Exposed to fortuitous hazards, he must be able to modify his tactics within the limits of his modest discernment. To saw, to break, to disentangle, to lift, to shake, to displace: these are so many means which are indispensable to the grave-digger in a predicament. Deprived of these resources, reduced to uniformity of procedure, the insect would be incapable of pursuing its calling.

We see at once how imprudent it would be to draw conclusions from an isolated case in which rational co-ordination or premeditated intention might appear to play its part. Every instinctive action no doubt has its motive; but does the animal in the first place judge whether the action is opportune? Let us begin by a careful consideration of the creature's labours; let us support each piece of evidence by others; and then we shall perhaps be able to answer the question.

First of all, a word as to diet. A general scavenger, the Burying-beetle refuses no sort of cadaveric putrescence. All is good to his senses, feathered game or furry, provided that the burden do not exceed his strength. He exploits the batrachian or the reptile with no less animation. He accepts without hesitation extraordinary finds, probably unknown to his race, as witness a certain Goldfish, a red Chinese Carp, whose body, placed in one of my cages, was forthwith considered an excellent tit-bit and buried according to the rules. Nor is butcher's meat despised. A mutton-cutlet, a strip of beef-steak, in the right stage of maturity, disappeared beneath the soil, receiving the same attentions as those lavished on the Mole or the Mouse. In short, the Necrophorus has no exclusive preferences; anything putrid he conveys underground.

The maintenance of his industry, therefore, presents no sort of difficulty. If one kind of game be lacking, some other, the first to hand, will very well replace it. Nor is there much trouble in fixing the site of his industry. A capacious wire-gauze cover, resting on an earthen pan filled to the brim with fresh, heaped sand, is sufficient. To obviate criminal attempts on the part of the Cats, whom the game would not fail to tempt, the cage is installed in a closed glass-house, which in winter shelters the plants and in summer serves as an entomological laboratory.

Now to work. The Mole lies in the centre of the enclosure. The soil, easily shifted and homogeneous, realizes the best conditions for comfortable work. Four Necrophori, three males and a female, are there with the body. They remain invisible, hidden beneath the carcase, which from time to time seems to return to life, shaken from end to end by the backs of the workers. An observer not in the secret would be somewhat astonished to see the dead creature move. From time to time, one of the sextons, almost always a male, comes out and walks round the animal, which he explores, probing its velvet coat. He hurriedly returns, appears again, once more investigates and creeps back under the corpse.

The tremors become more pronounced; the carcase oscillates, while a cushion of sand, pushed out from below, grows up all around it. The Mole, by reason of his own weight and the efforts of the grave-diggers, who are labouring at their task underneath, gradually sinks, for lack of support, into the undermined soil.

Presently the sand which has been pushed out quivers under the thrust of the invisible miners, slips into the pit and covers the interred Mole. It is a clandestine burial. The body seems to disappear of itself, as though engulfed by a fluid medium. For a long time yet, until the depth is regarded as sufficient, the body will continue to descend.

It is, on the whole, a very simple operation. As the diggers below deepen the cavity into which the corpse, shaken and tugged above, sinks without the direct intervention of the sextons, the grave fills of itself by the mere slipping of the soil. Stout shovels at the tips of their claws, powerful backs, capable of creating a little earthquake: the diggers need nothing more for the practice of their profession. Let us add—for this is an essential point—the art of continually jerking the body, so as to pack it into a lesser volume and make it glide through difficult passages. We shall soon see that this art plays a leading part in the industry of the Necrophori.

Although he has disappeared, the Mole is still far from having reached his destination. Let us leave the undertakers to finish their job. What they are now doing below ground is a continuation of what they did on the surface and would teach us nothing new. We will wait for two or three days.

The moment has come. Let us inform ourselves of what is happening down there. Let us visit the place of corruption. I shall never invite anybody to the exhumation. Of those about me, only little Paul has the courage to assist me.

The Mole is a Mole no longer, but a greenish horror, putrid, hairless, shrunk into a sort of fat, greasy rasher. The thing must have undergone careful manipulation to be thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its furry coat. Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur? Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity? I am not certain. But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the pinion- and tail-feathers. Reptiles and fish, on the other hand, retain their scales.

Let us return to the unrecognizable thing that was once a Mole. The tit-bit lies in a spacious crypt, with firm walls, a regular workshop, worthy of being the bake-house of a Copris. Except for the fur, which lies scattered about in flocks, it is intact. The grave-diggers have not eaten into it: it is the patrimony of the sons, not the provision of the parents, who, to sustain themselves, levy at most a few mouthfuls of the ooze of putrid humours.

Beside the dish which they are kneading and protecting are two Necrophori; a couple, no more. Four collaborated in the burial. What has become of the other two, both males? I find them hidden in the soil, at a distance, almost on the surface.

This observation is not an isolated one. Whenever I am present at a funeral undertaken by a squad in which the males, zealous one and all, predominate, I find presently, when the burial is completed, only one couple in the mortuary cellar. After lending their assistance, the rest have discreetly retired.

These grave-diggers, in truth, are remarkable fathers. They have nothing of the happy-go-lucky paternal carelessness that is the general rule among insects, which pester the mother for a moment with their attentions and then leave her to care for the offspring! But those who would be idlers in the other castes here labour valiantly, now in the interest of their own family, now in that of another's, without distinction. If a couple is in difficulties, helpers arrive, attracted by the odour of carrion; anxious to serve a lady, they creep under the body, work at it with back and claw, bury it and then go their ways, leaving the master and mistress of the house to their happiness.

For some time longer these two manipulate the morsel in concert, stripping it of fur or feather, trussing it and allowing it to simmer to the grub's taste. When everything is in order, the couple go forth, dissolving their partnership; and each, following his fancy, begins again elsewhere, even if only as a mere auxiliary.

Twice and no oftener hitherto have I found the father preoccupied by the future of his sons and labouring in order to leave them rich: it happens with certain dung-workers and with the Necrophori, who bury dead bodies. Scavengers and undertakers both have exemplary morals. Who would look for virtue in such a quarter?

What follows—the larval existence and the metamorphosis—is a secondary and, for that matter, a familiar detail. It is a dry subject and I will deal with it briefly. At the end of May, I exhume a Brown Rat, buried by the grave-diggers a fortnight earlier. Transformed into a black, sticky mass, the horrible dish provides me with fifteen larvae already, for the most part, of the normal size. A few adults, unquestionably connections of the brood, are also swarming amid the putrescence. The laying-time is over now and victuals are plentiful. Having nothing else to do, the foster-parents have sat down to the feast with the nurslings.

The undertakers are quick at rearing a family. It is at most a fortnight since the Rat was laid in the earth; and here already is a vigorous population on the verge of the metamorphosis. This precocity amazes me. It would seem as though carrion liquefaction, deadly to any other stomach, were in this case a food productive of special energy, which stimulates the organism and accelerates its growth, so that the fare may be consumed before its approaching conversion into mould. Living chemistry makes haste to outstrip the ultimate reactions of mineral chemistry.

White, naked, blind, possessing the customary attributes of life spent in the dark, the larva, with its tapering outline, is slightly reminiscent of the Ground-beetles'. The mandibles are black and powerful and make excellent dissecting-scissors. The limbs are short, but capable of a quick, toddling gait. The segments of the abdomen are clad on the upper surface in a narrow red plate, armed with four little spikes, whose office apparently is to furnish points of support when the larva quits the natal dwelling and dives into the soil, there to undergo the transformation. The thoracic segments are provided with wider plates, but unarmed.

The adults discovered in the company of their larval family, in this putrescence which was a Rat, are all abominably verminous. So shiny and neat in their attire, when at work under the first Moles of April, the Necrophori, when June approaches, become odious to look upon. A layer of parasites envelops them; insinuating itself into the joints, it forms an almost continuous crust. The insect presents a misshapen appearance under this overcoat of vermin, which my hair-pencil can hardly brush aside. Driven off the belly, the horde runs round the sufferer, perches on his back and refuses to let go.

I recognize the Beetle's Gamasus, the Tick who so often soils the ventral amethyst of our Geotrupes. No, life's prizes do not go to the useful. Necrophori and Geotrupes devote themselves to the general health; and these two corporations, so interesting in their hygienic functions, so remarkable for their domestic morals, fall victims to the vermin of poverty. Alas, of this discrepancy between the services rendered and the harshness of life there are many other examples outside the world of scavengers and undertakers!

The Burying-beetles display an exemplary domestic morality, but it does not continue till the end. In the first fortnight of June, the family being sufficiently provided, the sextons strike work and my cages are deserted on the surface, in spite of new arrivals of Mice and Sparrows. From time to time, some grave-digger leaves the subsoil and comes crawling languidly into the fresh air.

Another rather curious fact now attracts my attention. All those who climb up from underground are maimed, with limbs amputated at the joints, some higher up, some lower down. I see one cripple who has only one leg left entire. With this odd limb and the stumps of the others, lamentably tattered, scaly with vermin, he rows, as it were, over the sheet of dust. A comrade emerges, better off for legs, who finishes the invalid and cleans out his abdomen. Thus do my thirteen remaining Necrophori end their days, half-devoured by their companions, or at least shorn of several limbs. The pacific relations of the outset are succeeded by cannibalism.

History tells us that certain peoples, the Massagetae and others, used to kill off their old men to save them from senile misery. The fatal blow on the hoary skull was in their eyes an act of filial piety. The Necrophori have their share of these ancient barbarities. Full of days and henceforth useless, dragging out a weary existence, they mutually exterminate one another. Why prolong the agony of the impotent and the imbecile?

The Massagetae might plead, as an excuse for their atrocious custom, a dearth of provisions, which is an evil counsellor; not so the Necrophori, for, thanks to my generosity, victuals are more than plentiful, both beneath the soil and on the surface. Famine plays no part in this slaughter. What we see is an aberration due to exhaustion, the morbid fury of a life on the point of extinction. As is generally the case, work bestows a peaceable disposition on the grave-digger, while inaction inspires him with perverted tastes. Having nothing left to do, he breaks his kinsman's limbs and eats him up, heedless of being maimed or eaten himself. It is the final deliverance of verminous old age.

This murderous frenzy, breaking out late in life, is not peculiar to the Necrophorus. I have described elsewhere the perversity of the Osmia, so placid in the beginning. Feeling her ovaries exhausted, she smashes her neighbours' cells and even her own; she scatters the dusty honey, rips open the egg, eats it. The Mantis devours the lovers who have played their parts; the mother Decticus willingly nibbles a thigh of her decrepit husband; the merry Crickets, once the eggs are laid in the ground, indulge in tragic domestic quarrels and with not the least compunction slash open one another's bellies. When the cares of the family are finished, the joys of life are finished likewise. The insect then sometimes becomes depraved; and its disordered mechanism ends in aberrations.

The larva has nothing striking to show in the way of industry. When it has fattened to the desired extent, it leaves the charnel-house of the natal crypt and descends into the earth, far from the putrefaction. Here, working with its legs and its dorsal armour, it presses back the sand around it and makes itself a close cabin wherein to rest for the metamorphosis. When the lodge is ready and the torpor of the approaching moult arrives, it lies inert; but, at the least alarm, it comes to life and turns round on its axis.

Even so do several nymphs spin round and round when disturbed, notably that of AEgosomus scabricornis which I have now before my eyes in July. It is always a fresh surprise to see these mummies suddenly throw off their immobility and gyrate on their own axis with a mechanism whose secret deserves to be fathomed. The science of rational mechanics might find something here to whet its finest theories upon. The strength and litheness of a clown cannot compare with those of this budding flesh, this hardly coagulated glair.

Once isolated in its cell, the larva of the Necrophorus becomes a nymph in ten days or so. I lack the evidence furnished by direct observation, but the story is completed of itself. The Necrophorus must assume the adult form in the course of the summer; like the Dung-beetle, he must enjoy in the autumn a few days of revelry free from family cares. Then, when the cold weather draws near, he goes to earth in his winter quarters, whence he emerges as soon as spring arrives.



CHAPTER XII THE BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS

Let us come to the feats of reason which have earned for the Necrophorus the best part of his fame and, to begin with, submit the case related by Clairville, that of the too hard soil and the call for assistance, to the test of experiment.

With this object I pave the centre of the space beneath the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve.

In order to approach the conditions of the anecdote, I must have a Mouse; with a Mole, a heavy mass, the removal would perhaps present too much difficulty. To obtain one, I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a very common thing is needed, it becomes rare. Defying decency in his speech, after the manner of his ancestors' Latin, the Provencal says, but even more crudely than in my translation:

"If you look for dung, the Donkeys become constipated!"

At last I possess the Mouse of my dreams! She comes to me from that refuge, furnished with a truss of straw, in which official charity grants a day's hospitality to the pauper wandering over the face of the fertile earth, from that municipal hostel whence one inevitably issues covered with Lice. O Reaumur,[1] who used to invite marchionesses to see your caterpillars change their skins, what would you have said of a future disciple conversant with such squalor as this? Perhaps it is well that we should not be ignorant of it, so that we may have compassion with that of the beast.

[Footnote 1: Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), the inventor of the Reaumur thermometer and author of Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des insectes (1734-1742).—Translator's Note.]

The Mouse so greatly desired is mine. I place her upon the centre of the brick. The grave-diggers under the wire cover are now seven in number, including three females. All have gone to earth; some are inactive, close to the surface; the rest are busy in their crypts. The presence of the fresh corpse is soon perceived. About seven o'clock in the morning, three Necrophori come hurrying up, two males and a female. They slip under the Mouse, who moves in jerks, a sign of the efforts of the burying-party. An attempt is made to dig into the layer of sand which hides the brick, so that a bank of rubbish accumulates round the body.

For a couple of hours the jerks continue without results. I profit by the circumstance to learn the manner in which the work is performed. The bare brick allows me to see what the excavated soil would conceal from me. When it is necessary to move the body, the Beetle turns over; with his six claws he grips the hair of the dead animal, props himself upon his back and pushes, using his forehead and the tip of his abdomen as a lever. When he wants to dig, he resumes the normal position. So, turn and turn about, the sexton strives, now with his legs in the air, when it is a question of shifting the body or dragging it lower down; now with his feet on the ground, when it is necessary to enlarge the grave.

The point at which the Mouse lies is finally recognized as unassailable. A male appears in the open. He explores the corpse, goes round it, scratches a little at random. He goes back; and immediately the dead body rocks. Is he advising his collaborators of what he has discovered? Is he arranging the work with a view to their establishing themselves elsewhere, on propitious soil?

The facts are far from confirming this idea. When he shakes the body, the others imitate him and push, but without combining their efforts in a given direction, for, after advancing a little towards the edge of the brick, the burden goes back again, returning to the point of departure. In the absence of a concerted understanding, their efforts of leverage are wasted. Nearly three hours are occupied by oscillations which mutually annul one another. The Mouse does not cross the little sand-hill heaped about her by the rakes of the workers.

For the second time, a male appears and makes a round of exploration. A boring is effected in loose earth, close beside the brick. This is a trial excavation, to learn the nature of the soil, a narrow well, of no great depth, into which the insect plunges to half its length. The well-sinker returns to the other workers, who arch their backs, and the load progresses a finger's-breadth towards the point recognized as favourable. Have we done the trick this time? No, for after a while the Mouse recoils. There is no progress towards a solution of the difficulty.

Now two males come out in search of information, each of his own accord. Instead of stopping at the point already sounded, a point most judiciously chosen, it seemed, on account of its proximity, which would save laborious carting, they precipitately scour the whole area of the cage, trying the soil on this side and on that and ploughing superficial furrows in it. They get as far from the brick as the limits of the enclosure permit.

They dig, by preference, against the base of the cover; here they make several borings, without any reason, so far as I can see, the bed of soil being everywhere equally assailable away from the brick; the first point sounded is abandoned for a second, which is rejected in its turn. A third and fourth are tried; then another. At the sixth point the choice is made. In all these cases the excavation is by no means a grave destined to receive the Mouse, but a mere trial boring, of inconsiderable depth and of the diameter of the digger's body.

Back again to the Mouse, who suddenly shakes, swings, advances, recoils, first in one direction, then in another, until in the end the hillock of sand is crossed. Now we are free of the brick and on excellent soil. Little by little the load advances. This is no cartage by a team hauling in the open, but a jerky removal, the work of invisible levers. The body seems to shift of its own accord.

This time, after all those hesitations, the efforts are concerted; at least, the load reaches the region sounded far more rapidly than I expected. Then begins the burial, according to the usual method. It is one o'clock. It has taken the Necrophori halfway round the clock to ascertain the condition of the locality and to displace the Mouse.

In this experiment it appears, in the first place, that the males play a major part in the affairs of the household. Better-equipped, perhaps, than their mates, they make investigations when a difficulty occurs; they inspect the soil, recognize whence the check arises and choose the spot at which the grave shall be dug. In the lengthy experiment of the brick, the two males alone explored the surroundings and set to work to solve the difficulty. Trusting her assistants, the female, motionless beneath the Mouse, awaited the result of their enquiries. The tests which are to follow will confirm the merits of these valiant auxiliaries.

In the second place, the points where the Mouse lies being recognized as presenting an insurmountable resistance, there is no grave dug in advance, a little farther off, in the loose soil. All the attempts are limited, I repeat, to shallow soundings, which inform the insect of the possibility of inhumation.

It is absolute nonsense to speak of their first preparing the grave to which the body will afterwards be carted. In order to excavate the soil, our sextons have to feel the weight of their dead upon their backs. They work only when stimulated by the contact of its fur. Never, never in this world, do they venture to dig a grave unless the body to be buried already occupies the site of the cavity. This is absolutely confirmed by my two months and more of daily observations.

The rest of Clairville's anecdote bears examination no better. We are told that the Necrophorus in difficulties goes in search of assistance and returns with companions who assist him to bury the Mouse. This, in another form, is the edifying story of the Sacred Beetle whose pellet has rolled into a rut. Powerless to withdraw his booty from the abyss, the wily Dung-beetle summons three or four of his neighbours, who kindly pull out the pellet and return to their labours when the work of salvage is done.[2]

[Footnote 2: For the confutation of this theory, cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. i.—Translator's Note.]

The ill-interpreted exploit of the thieving pill-roller sets me on my guard against that of the undertaker. Shall I be too particular if I ask what precautions the observer took to recognize the owner of the Mouse on his return, when he reappears, as we are told, with four assistants? What sign denotes that one of the five who was able, in so rational a manner, to call for help? Can we even be sure that the one to disappear returns and forms one of the band? There is nothing to tell us so; and this was the essential point which a sterling observer was bound not to neglect. Were they not rather five chance Necrophori who, guided by the smell, without any previous understanding, hastened to the abandoned Mouse to exploit her on their own account? I incline to this opinion, the likeliest of all in the absence of exact information.

Probability becomes certainty if we check the fact by experiment. The test with the brick already tells us something. For six hours my three specimens exhausted themselves in efforts before they succeeded in removing their booty and placing it on practicable soil. In this long and heavy job, helpful neighbours would have been most welcome. Four other Necrophori, buried here and there under a little sand, comrades and acquaintances, fellow-workers of the day before, were occupying the same cage; and not one of the busy ones thought of calling on them to assist. Despite their extreme embarrassment, the owners of the Mouse accomplished their task to the end, without the least help, though this could have been so easily requisitioned.

Being three, one might say, they deemed themselves strong enough; they needed no one else to lend them a hand. The objection does not hold good. On many occasions and under conditions even more difficult than those presented by a hard soil, I have again and again seen isolated Necrophori wearing themselves out against my artifices; yet not once did they leave their workshop to recruit helpers. Collaborators, it is true, often arrive, but they are summoned by their sense of smell, not by the first occupant. They are fortuitous helpers; they are never called in. They are received without strife but also without gratitude. They are not summoned; they are tolerated.

In the glazed shelter where I keep the cage I happened to catch one of these chance assistants in the act. Passing that way in the night and scenting dead flesh, he had entered where none of his kind had yet penetrated of his own accord. I surprised him on the dome of the cover. If the wire had not prevented him, he would have set to work incontinently, in company with the rest. Had my captives invited this one? Assuredly not. Heedless of others' efforts, he hastened up, attracted by the odour of the Mole. So it was with those whose obliging assistance is extolled. I repeat, in respect of their imaginary prowess, what I have said elsewhere of the Sacred Beetle's: it is a child's story, worthy to rank with any fairytale for the amusement of the simple.

A hard soil, necessitating the removal of the body, is not the only difficulty with which the Necrophori are acquainted. Frequently, perhaps more often than not, the ground is covered with grass, above all with couch-grass, whose tenacious rootlets form an inextricable network below the surface. To dig in the interstices is possible, but to drag the dead animal through them is another matter: the meshes of the net are too close to give it passage. Will the grave-digger find himself helpless against such an obstacle, which must be an extremely common one? That could not be.

Exposed to this or that habitual impediment in the exercise of its calling, the animal is always equipped accordingly; otherwise its profession would be impracticable. No end is attained without the necessary means and aptitudes. Besides that of the excavator, the Necrophorus certainly possesses another art: the art of breaking the cables, the roots, the stolons, the slender rhizomes which check the body's descent into the grave. To the work of the shovel and the pick must be added that of the shears. All this is perfectly logical and may be clearly foreseen. Nevertheless, let us call in experiment, the best of witnesses.

I borrow from the kitchen-range an iron trivet whose legs will supply a solid foundation for the engine which I am devising. This is a coarse network made of strips of raffia, a fairly accurate imitation of that of the couch-grass. The very irregular meshes are nowhere wide enough to admit of the passage of the creature to be buried, which this time is a Mole. The machine is planted by its three feet in the soil of the cage, level with the surface. A little sand conceals the ropes. The Mole is placed in the centre; and my bands of sextons are let loose upon the body.

The burial is performed without a hitch in the course of an afternoon. The raffia hammock, almost the equivalent of the natural network of the couch-grass, scarcely disturbs the burying-process. Matters do not proceed quite so quickly; and that is all. No attempt is made to shift the Mole, who sinks into the ground where he lies. When the operation is finished, I remove the trivet. The network is broken at the spot where the corpse was lying. A few strips have been gnawed through; a small number, only as many as were strictly necessary to permit the passage of the body.

Well done, my undertakers! I expected no less of your skill and tact. You foiled the experimenter's wiles by employing the resources which you use against natural obstacles. With mandibles for shears, you patiently cut my strings as you would have gnawed the threads of the grass-roots. This is meritorious, if not deserving of exceptional glorification. The shallowest of the insects that work in earth would have done as much if subjected to similar conditions.

Let us ascend a stage in the series of difficulties. The Mole is now fixed by a strap of raffia fore and aft to a light horizontal cross-bar resting on two firmly-planted forks. It is like a joint of venison on the spit, eccentrically fastened. The dead animal touches the ground throughout the length of its body.

The Necrophori disappear under the corpse and, feeling the contact of its fur, begin to dig. The grave grows deeper and an empty space appears; but the coveted object does not descend, retained as it is by the cross-bar which the two forks keep in place. The digging slackens, the hesitations become prolonged.

However, one of the grave-diggers climbs to the surface, wanders over the Mole, inspects him and ends by perceiving the strap at the back. He gnaws and ravels it tenaciously. I hear the click of the shears that completes the rupture. Crack! The thing is done. Dragged down by his own weight, the Mole sinks into the grave, but slantwise, with his head still outside, kept in place by the second strap.

The Beetles proceed with the burial of the hinder part of the Mole; they twitch and jerk it now in this direction, now in that. Nothing comes of it; the thing refuses to give. A fresh sortie is made by one of them, to find out what is happening overhead. The second strap is perceived, is severed in turn; and henceforth the work goes on as well as could be wished.

My compliments, perspicacious cable-cutters! But I must not exaggerate. The Mole's straps were for you the little cords with which you are so familiar in turfy soil. You broke them, as well as the hammock of the previous experiment, just as you sever with the blades of your shears any natural thread stretching across your catacombs. It is an indispensable trick of your trade. If you had had to learn it by experience, to think it out before practising it, your race would have disappeared, killed by the hesitations of its apprenticeship, for the spots prolific of Moles, Frogs, Lizards and other viands to your taste are usually covered with grass.

You are capable of much better things still; but, before setting forth these, let us examine the case when the ground bristles with slender brushwood, which holds the corpse at a short distance from the ground. Will the find thus hanging where it chances to fall remain unemployed? Will the Necrophori pass on, indifferent to the superb morsel which they see and smell a few inches above their heads, or will they make it drop from its gibbet?

Game does not abound to such a point that it can be despised if a few efforts will obtain it. Before I see the thing happen, I am persuaded that it will fall, that the Necrophori, often confronted with the difficulties of a body not lying on the soil, must possess the instinct to shake it to the ground. The fortuitous support of a few bits of stubble, of a few interlaced twigs, so common in the fields, cannot put them off. The drop of the suspended body, if placed too high, must certainly form part of their instinctive methods. For the rest, let us watch them at work.

I plant in the sand of the cage a meagre tuft of thyme. The shrub is at most some four inches in height. In the branches I place a Mouse, entangling the tail, the paws and the neck among the twigs to increase the difficulty. The population of the cage now consists of fourteen Necrophori and will remain the same until the close of my investigations. Of course they do not all take part simultaneously in the day's work: the majority remain underground, dozing or occupied in setting their cellars in order. Sometimes only one, often two, three or four, rarely more, busy themselves with the corpse which I offer them. To-day, two hasten to the Mouse, who is soon perceived overhead on the tuft of thyme.

They gain the top of the plant by way of the trelliswork of the cage. Here are repeated, with increased hesitation, due to the inconvenient nature of the support, the tactics employed to remove the body when the soil is unfavourable. The insect props itself against a branch, thrusting alternately with back and claws, jerking and shaking vigorously until the point whereat it is working is freed from its fetters. In one brief shift, by dint of heaving their backs, the two collaborators extricate the body from the tangle. Yet another shake; and the Mouse is down. The burial follows.

There is nothing new in this experiment: the find has been treated just as though it lay on soil unsuitable for burial. The fall is the result of an attempt to transport the load.

The time has come to set up the Frog's gibbet made famous by Gleditsch. The batrachian is not indispensable; a Mole will serve as well or even better. With a ligament of raffia I fix him, by his hind-legs, to a twig which I plant vertically in the ground, inserting it to no great depth. The creature hangs plumb against the gibbet, its head and shoulders making ample contact with the soil.

The grave-diggers set to work beneath the part which lies along the ground, at the very foot of the stake; they dig a funnel into which the Mole's muzzle, head and neck sink little by little. The gibbet becomes uprooted as they descend and ends by falling, dragged over by the weight of its heavy burden. I am assisting at the spectacle of the overturned stake, one of the most astonishing feats of reason with which the insect has ever been credited.

This, for one who is considering the problem of instinct, is an exciting moment. But let us beware of forming conclusions just yet; we might be in too great a hurry. Let us first ask ourselves whether the fall of the stake was intentional or accidental. Did the Necrophori lay it bare with the express purpose of making it fall? Or did they, on the contrary, dig at its base solely in order to bury that part of the Mole which lay on the ground? That is the question, which, for the rest, is very easy to answer.

The experiment is repeated; but this time the gibbet is slanting and the Mole, hanging in a vertical position, touches the ground at a couple of inches from the base of the apparatus. Under these conditions, absolutely no attempt is made to overthrow it. Not the least scrape of a claw is delivered at the foot of the gibbet. The entire work of excavation is performed at a distance, under the body, whose shoulders are lying on the ground. Here and here only a hole is dug to receive the front of the body, the part accessible to the sextons.

A difference of an inch in the position of the suspended animal destroys the famous legend. Even so, many a time, the most elementary sieve, handled with a little logic, is enough to winnow a confused mass of statements and to release the good grain of truth.

Yet another shake of this sieve. The gibbet is slanting or perpendicular, no matter which; but the Mole, fixed by his hind-legs to the top of the twig, does not touch the soil; he hangs a few fingers'-breadths from the ground, out of the sextons' reach.

What will they do now? Will they scrape at the foot of the gibbet in order to overturn it? By no means; and the ingenuous observer who looked for such tactics would be greatly disappointed. No attention is paid to the base of the support. It is not vouchsafed even a stroke of the rake. Nothing is done to overturn it, nothing, absolutely nothing! It is by other methods that the Burying-beetles obtain the Mole.

These decisive experiments, repeated under many different forms, prove that never, never in this world, do the Necrophori dig, or even give a superficial scrape, at the foot of the gallows, unless the hanging body touch the ground at that point. And, in the latter case, if the twig should happen to fall, this is in no way an intentional result, but a mere fortuitous effect of the burial already commenced.

What, then, did the man with the Frog, of whom Gleditsch tells us, really see? If his stick was overturned, the body placed to dry beyond the assaults of the Necrophori must certainly have touched the soil: a strange precaution against robbers and damp! We may well attribute more foresight to the preparer of dried Frogs and allow him to hang his animal a few inches off the ground. In that case, as all my experiments emphatically declare, the fall of the stake undermined by the sextons is a pure matter of imagination.

Yet another of the fine arguments in favour of the reasoning-power of insects flies from the light of investigation and founders in the slough of error! I wonder at your simple faith, O masters who take seriously the statements of chance-met observers, richer in imagination than in veracity; I wonder at your credulous zeal, when, without criticism, you build up your theories on such absurdities!

Let us continue. The stake is henceforth planted perpendicularly, but the body hanging on it does not reach the base: a condition enough to ensure that there will never be any digging at this point. I make use of a Mouse, who, by reason of her light weight, will lend herself better to the insect's manoeuvres. The dead animal is fixed by the hind-legs to the top of the apparatus with a raffia strap. It hangs plumb, touching the stick.

Soon two Necrophori have discovered the morsel. They climb the greased pole; they explore the prize, poking their foreheads into its fur. It is recognized as an excellent find. To work, therefore. Here we have again, but under more difficult conditions, the tactics employed when it was necessary to displace the unfavourably situated body: the two collaborators slip between the Mouse and the stake and, taking a grip of the twig and exerting a leverage with their backs, they jerk and shake the corpse, which sways, twirls about, swings away from the stake and swings back again. All the morning is passed in vain attempts, interrupted by explorations on the animal's body.

In the afternoon, the cause of the check is at last recognized; not very clearly, for the two obstinate gallow-robbers first attack the Mouse's hind-legs, a little way below the strap. They strip them bare, flay them and cut away the flesh about the foot. They have reached the bone, when one of them finds the string of raffia beneath his mandibles. This, to him, is a familiar thing, representing the grass-thread so frequent in burials in turfy soil. Tenaciously the shears gnaw at the bond; the fibrous fetter is broken; and the Mouse falls, to be buried soon after.

If it stood alone, this breaking of the suspending tie would be a magnificent performance; but considered in connection with the sum of the Beetle's customary labours it loses any far-reaching significance. Before attacking the strap, which was not concealed in any way, the insect exerted itself for a whole morning in shaking the body, its usual method. In the end, finding the cord, it broke it, as it would have broken a thread of couch-grass encountered underground.

Under the conditions devised for the Beetle, the use of the shears is the indispensable complement of the use of the shovel; and the modicum of discernment at his disposal is enough to inform him when it will be well to employ the clippers. He cuts what embarrasses him, with no more exercise of reason than he displays when lowering his dead Mouse underground. So little does he grasp the relation of cause and effect that he tries to break the bone of the leg before biting the raffia which is knotted close beside him. The difficult task is attempted before the extremely easy one.

Difficult, yes, but not impossible, provided that the Mouse be young. I begin over again with a strip of iron wire, on which the insect's shears cannot get a grip, and a tender Mousekin, half the size of an adult. This time a tibia is gnawed through, sawed in two by the Beetle's mandibles, near the spring of the heel. The detached leg leaves plenty of space for the other, which readily slips from the metal band; and the little corpse falls to the ground.

But, if the bone be too hard, if the prize suspended be a Mole, an adult Mouse or a Sparrow, the wire ligament opposes an insurmountable obstacle to the attempts of the Necrophori, who, for nearly a week, work at the hanging body, partly stripping it of fur or feather and dishevelling it until it forms a lamentable object, and at last abandon it when desiccation sets in. And yet a last resource remained, one as rational as infallible: to overthrow the stake. Of course, not one dreams of doing so.

For the last time let us change our artifices. The top of the gibbet consists of a little fork, with the prongs widely opened and measuring barely two-fifths of an inch in length. With a thread of hemp, less easily attacked than a strip of raffia, I bind the hind-legs of an adult Mouse together, a little above the heels; and I slip one of the prongs in between. To bring the thing down one has only to slide it a little way upwards; it is like a young Rabbit hanging in the window of a poulterer's shop.

Five Necrophori come to inspect what I have prepared. After much futile shaking, the tibiae are attacked. This, it seems, is the method usually employed when the corpse is caught by one of its limbs in some narrow fork of a low-growing plant. While trying to saw through the bone—a heavy job this time—one of the workers slips between the shackled legs; in this position, he feels the furry touch of the Mouse against his chine. No more is needed to arouse his propensity to thrust with his back. With a few heaves of the lever the thing is done: the Mouse rises a little, slides over the supporting peg and falls to the ground.

Is this manoeuvre really thought out? Has the insect indeed perceived, by the light of a flash of reason, that to make the morsel fall it was necessary to unhook it by sliding it along the peg? Has it actually perceived the mechanism of the hanging? I know some persons—indeed, I know many—who, in the presence of this magnificent result, would be satisfied without further investigation.

More difficult to convince, I modify the experiment before drawing a conclusion. I suspect that the Necrophorus, without in any way foreseeing the consequences of his action, heaved his back merely because he felt the animal's legs above him. With the system of suspension adopted, the push of the back, employed in all cases of difficulty, was brought to bear first upon the point of support; and the fall resulted from this happy coincidence. That point, which has to be slipped along the peg in order to unhook the object, ought really to be placed at a short distance from the Mouse, so that the Necrophori may no longer feel her directly on their backs when they push.

A wire binds together now the claws of a Sparrow, now the heels of a Mouse and is bent, three-quarters of an inch farther away, into a little ring, which slips very loosely over one of the prongs of the fork, a short, almost horizontal prong. The least push of this ring is enough to bring the hanging body to the ground; and because it stands out it lends itself excellently to the insect's methods. In short, the arrangement is the same as just now, with this difference, that the point of support is at a short distance from the animal hung up.

My trick, simple though it be, is quite successful. For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiae, the hard claws refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivel, unused, upon the gallows. My Necrophori, some sooner, some later, abandon the insoluble mechanical problem: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to unhook the coveted carcase.

Curious reasoners, in faith! If, just now, they had a lucid idea of the mutual relations between the tied legs and the suspending peg; if they made the Mouse fall by a reasoned manoeuvre, whence comes it that the present artifice, no less simple than the first, is to them an insurmountable obstacle? For days and days they work on the body, examining it from head to foot, without noticing the movable support, the cause of their mishap. In vain I prolong my watch; I never see a single one of them push the support with his foot or butt it with his head.

Their defeat is not due to lack of strength. Like the Geotrupes, they are vigorous excavators. When you grasp them firmly in your hand, they slip into the interstices of the fingers and plough up your skin so as to make you quickly loose your hold. With his head, a powerful ploughshare, the Beetle might very easily push the ring off its short support. He is not able to do so, because he does not think of it; he does not think of it, because he is devoid of the faculty attributed to him, in order to support their theories, by the dangerous generosity of the evolutionists.

Divine reason, sun of the intellect, what a clumsy slap in thy august countenance, when the glorifiers of the animal degrade thee with such denseness!

Let us now examine the mental obscurity of the Necrophori under another aspect. My captives are not so satisfied with their sumptuous lodging that they do not seek to escape, especially when there is a dearth of labour, that sovran consoler of the afflicted, man or beast. Internment within the wire cover palls upon them. So, when the Mole is buried and everything in order in the cellar, they stray uneasily over the trellised dome; they clamber up, come down, go up again and take to flight, a flight which instantly becomes a fall, owing to collision with the wire grating. They pick themselves up and begin all over again. The sky is splendid; the weather is hot, calm and propitious for those in search of the Lizard crushed beside the footpath. Perhaps the effluvia of the gamy tit-bit have reached them from afar, imperceptible to any other sense than that of the grave-diggers. My Necrophori therefore would be glad to get away.

Can they? Nothing would be easier, if a glimmer of reason were to aid them. Through the trelliswork, over which they have so often strayed, they have seen, outside, the free soil, the promised land which they want to reach. A hundred times if once have they dug at the foot of the rampart. There, in vertical wells, they take up their station, drowsing whole days on end while unemployed. If I give them a fresh Mole, they emerge from their retreat by the entrance-corridor and come to hide themselves beneath the belly of the beast. The burial over, they return, one here, one there, to the confines of the enclosure and disappear underground.

Well, in two and a half months of captivity, despite long stays at the base of the trellis, at a depth of three-quarters of an inch beneath the surface, it is rare indeed for a Necrophorus to succeed in circumventing the obstacle, in prolonging his excavation beneath the barrier, in digging an elbow and bringing it out on the other side, a trifling task for these vigorous creatures. Of fourteen only one succeeds in escaping.

A chance deliverance and not premeditated; for, if the happy event had been the result of a mental combination, the other prisoners, practically his equals in powers of perception, would all, from first to last, have discovered by rational means the elbowed path leading to the outer world; and the cage would promptly be deserted. The failure of the great majority proves that the single fugitive was simply digging at random. Circumstances favoured him; and that is all. We must not put it to his credit that he succeeded where all the others failed.

We must also beware of attributing to the Necrophori a duller understanding than is usual in insect psychology. I find the ineptness of the undertaker in all the Beetles reared under the wire cover, on the bed of sand into which the rim of the dome sinks a little way. With very rare exceptions, fortuitous accidents, not one thinks of circumventing the barrier by way of the base; not one manages to get outside by means of a slanting tunnel, not even though he be a miner by profession, as are the Dung-beetles par excellence. Captives under the wire dome and anxious to escape, Sacred Beetles, Geotrupes, Copres, Gymnopleuri,[3] Sisyphi,[4] all see about them the free space, the joys of the open sunlight; and not one thinks of going round under the rampart, which would present no difficulty to their pickaxes.

[Footnote 3: Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. vii.—Translator's Note.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. idem: chap. xv.—Translator's Note.]

Even in the higher ranks of animality, examples of similar mental obfuscation are not lacking. Audubon[5] tells us how, in his days, wild Turkeys were caught in North America. In a clearing known to be frequented by these birds, a great cage was constructed with stakes driven into the ground. In the centre of the enclosure opened a short tunnel, which dipped under the palisade and returned to the surface outside the cage by a gentle slope, which was open to the sky. The central opening, wide enough to give a bird free passage, occupied only a portion of the enclosure, leaving around it, against the circle of stakes, a wide unbroken zone. A few handfuls of maize were scattered in the interior of the trap, as well as round about it, and in particular along the sloping path, which passed under a sort of bridge and led to the centre of the contrivance. In short, the Turkey-trap presented an ever-open door. The bird found it in order to enter, but did not think of looking for it in order to go out.

[Footnote 5: John James Audubon (1780-1851), the noted American ornithologist, of French descent, author of Birds of America (1827-1830) and Ornithological Biography (1831-1839).—Translator's Note.]

According to the famous American ornithologist, the Turkeys, lured by the grains of maize, descended the insidious slope, entered the short underground passage and beheld, at the end of it, plunder and the light. A few steps farther and the gluttons emerged, one by one, from beneath the bridge. They distributed themselves about the enclosure. The maize was abundant; and the Turkeys' crops grew swollen.

When all was gathered, the band wished to retreat, but not one of the prisoners paid any attention to the central hole by which he had arrived. Gobbling uneasily, they passed again and again across the bridge whose arch was yawning beside them; they circled round against the palisade, treading a hundred times in their own footprints; they thrust their necks, with their crimson wattles, through the bars; and there, with their beaks in the open air, they fought and struggled until they were exhausted.

Remember, O inept one, what happened but a little while ago; think of the tunnel that led you hither! If that poor brain of yours contains an atom of ability, put two ideas together and remind yourself that the passage by which you entered is there and open for your escape! You will do nothing of the kind. The light, an irresistible attraction, holds you subjugated against the palisade; and the shadow of the yawning pit, which has but lately permitted you to enter and will quite as readily permit you to go out, leaves you indifferent. To recognize the use of this opening you would have to reflect a little, to recall the past; but this tiny retrospective calculation is beyond your powers. So the trapper, returning a few days later, will find a rich booty, the entire flock imprisoned!

Of poor intellectual repute, does the Turkey deserve his name for stupidity? He does not appear to be more limited than another. Audubon depicts him as endowed with certain useful ruses, in particular when he has to baffle the attacks of his nocturnal enemy, the Virginian Owl. As for his behaviour in the snare with the underground passage, any other bird, impassioned of the light, would do the same.

Under rather more difficult conditions, the Necrophorus repeats the ineptness of the Turkey. When he wishes to return to the daylight, after resting in a short burrow against the rim of the cover, the Beetle, seeing a little light filtering through the loose soil, reascends the entrance-well, incapable of telling himself that he has only to prolong the tunnel as far in the opposite direction to reach the outer world beyond the wall and gain his freedom. Here again is one in whom we shall seek in vain for any sign of reflection. Like the rest, in spite of his legendary renown, he has no guide but the unconscious promptings of instinct.



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 Jardiniere, 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.

[Footnote 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.