Social Life in the Insect World

Fame is the daughter of Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this reason or that, it is given a place in those legends of the people whose last care is truth.

For example, who is there that does not, at least by hearsay, know the Cigale? Where in the entomological world shall we find a more famous reputation? Her fame as an impassioned singer, careless of the future, was the subject of our earliest lessons in repetition. In short, easily remembered lines of verse, we learned how she was destitute when the winter winds arrived, and how she went begging for food to the Ant, her neighbour. A poor welcome she received, the would-be borrower!—a welcome that has become proverbial, and her chief title to celebrity. The petty malice of the two short lines—

Vous chantiez! j'en suis bien aise,

Eh bien, dansez maintenant!

has done more to immortalise the insect than her skill as a musician. "You sang! I am very glad to hear it! Now you can dance!" The words lodge in the childish memory, never to be forgotten.

The process deserves a detailed description.

At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convulsive start, suddenly assumes a most terrifying posture. An electric shock would not produce a more immediate result. The transition is so sudden, the mimicry so threatening, that the unaccustomed observer will draw back his hand, as though at some unknown danger. Seasoned as I am, I myself must confess to being startled on occasions when my thoughts have been elsewhere. The creature spreads out like a fan actuated by a spring, or a fantastic Jack-in-the-box.

The wing-covers open, and are thrust obliquely aside; the wings spring to their full width, standing up like parallel screens of transparent gauze, forming a pyramidal prominence which dominates the back; the end of the abdomen curls upwards crosier-wise, then falls and unbends itself with a sort of swishing noise, a pouf! pouf! like the sound emitted by the feathers of a strutting turkey-cock. One is reminded of the puffing of a startled adder.

Proudly straddling on its four hind-claws, the insect holds its long body almost vertical. The murderous fore-limbs, at first folded and pressed against one another on the thorax, open to their full extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillæ ornamented with rows of pearls, and a black spot with a central point of white. These two eyes, faintly recalling those of the peacock's tail, and the fine ebony embossments, are part of the blazonry of conflict, concealed upon ordinary occasions. Their jewels are only assumed when they make themselves terrible and superb for battle.

In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat factories which in the course of the year cut up one million and eighty thousand bullocks and seventeen hundred thousand swine, which enter a train of machinery alive and issue transformed into cans of preserved meat, sausages, lard, and rolled hams. I am reminded of these establishments because the beetle I am about to speak of will show us a compatible celerity of butchery.

In a spacious, glazed insectorium I have twenty-five Carabi aurati. At present they are motionless, lying beneath a piece of board which I gave them for shelter. Their bellies cooled by the sand, their backs warmed by the board, which is visited by the sun, they slumber and digest their food. By good luck I chance upon a procession of pine-caterpillars, in process of descending from their tree in search of a spot suitable for burial, the prelude to the phase of the subterranean chrysalis. Here is an excellent flock for the slaughter-house of the Carabi.

I capture them and place them in the insectorium. The procession is quickly re-formed; the caterpillars, to the number of perhaps a hundred and fifty, move forward in an undulating line. They pass near the piece of board, one following the other like the pigs at Chicago. The moment is propitious. I cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war: that is to say, I remove the plank.

The song consists of a Gri-i-i, Gri-i-i, a slow, gentle note, rendered more expressive by a slight tremor. Hearing it, one divines the extreme tenuity and the amplitude of the vibrating membranes. If the insect is not in any way disturbed as it sits in the low foliage, the note does not vary, but at the least noise the performer becomes a ventriloquist. First of all you hear it there, close by, in front of you, and the next moment you hear it over there, twenty yards away; the double note decreased in volume by the distance.

You go forward. Nothing is there. The sound proceeds again from its original point. But no—it is not there; it is to the left now—unless it is to the right—or behind.... Complete confusion! It is impossible to detect, by means of the ear, the direction from which the chirp really comes. Much patience and many precautions will be required before you can capture the insect by the light of the lantern. A few specimens caught under these conditions and placed in a cage have taught me the little I know concerning the musician who so perfectly deceives our ears.

I was richly rewarded. About nine o'clock that evening, when the household was going to bed, there was a sudden hubbub in the room next to mine. Little Paul, half undressed, was rushing to and fro, running, jumping, stamping, and overturning the chairs as if possessed. I heard him call me. "Come quick!" he shrieked; "come and see these butterflies! Big as birds! The room's full of them!"

I ran. There was that which justified the child's enthusiasm and his hardly hyperbolical exclamation. It was an invasion of giant butterflies; an invasion hitherto unexampled in our house. Four were already caught and placed in a bird-cage. Others—numbers of them—were flying across the ceiling.

This astonishing sight recalled the prisoner of the morning to my mind. "Put on your togs, kiddy!" I told my son; "put down your cage, and come with me. We shall see something worth seeing."

We had to go downstairs to reach my study, which occupies the right wing of the house. In the kitchen we met the servant; she too was bewildered by the state of affairs. She was pursuing the huge butterflies with her apron, having taken them at first for bats.

It seemed as though the Great Peacock had taken possession of my whole house, more or less.