Such is the original type of a young world which in due time will be inhabited. The cocoa-palm will have its insects; the birds will pause on its boughs; men will gather its fruit. Wrecked ships and floating timbers, propelled by the sea, will bring there after awhile tenants of every kind.Some of these islands, when extended, enlarged, and solidified, measure not less than twenty-five miles in circumference. Many are larger still; fertile, inhabited, and populous, like the Maldives.The ambition of their architects might rest contented, you would think, with these vast creations. But to insure their fixity, theyhave increased their extent. The buttresses by which they strengthen their work at the bottom of the sea being prolonged and elevated, expand into banks, which link the isles to each other over an immense area. Along the line of burning life, in the tropic zone, these indefatigable builders have daringly intersected the sea and worked athwart its currents, and already are arresting the courses of our navigators.New Caledonia is now surrounded by a reef of 145 leagues in length. The chain of the Maldive Islands measures 480 English miles. To the east of New Holland stretches a bank of polypes over 360 leagues, 127 of these without interruption. Finally, in the Pacific Ocean the mass known as the Dangerous Archipelago is about 400 leagues in length by 150 in breadth.If they continue after this fashion, incessantly connecting their various piles of submarine masonry, they will perhaps realize the prophecy of Kirby, who discerned in the coral isles and reefs the possibility of a new world—a brilliant and fertile world; and in the course of centuries may accomplish the formation of a causeway, an immense bridge, connecting Asia with America.IV.—LOVE AND DEATH.CHAPTER IV.LOVE AND DEATH.Above the infinite elementary life,—that quasi-vegetable life in which generation is but, as it were, a-budding,—begins the distinct, individual, and complete organism whose strongly centralized electric network of nerves is able to sympathize directly with the rapid energy of its acts and resolutions.However humble the insect may seem in appearance, it is from the first independent of the immovable, expectant existence of all the inferior races. It is born entirely free from that communistic fatalism which merges the being of each in the life of all. It exists independently; it moves, goes, comes, advances or returns, changes its determination or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience to its wants, appetites, and caprices. It suffices for itself; it foresees, provides, defends, and boldly confronts the most unexpected chances.In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of personality?The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all at once admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the support and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy andabsorbent. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service which Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disencumber the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter, which acts as an obstacle to the growth of life; to save the latter from the consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its abundance.No other being, as we shall prove, exercises so great an influence upon our globe; no other throws itself into the condition of general existence with so vital an energy. But this extraordinary strength, in such disproportion to the size, bulk, and weight of the insect, is subject to a severe law; the rapid, absolute, and complete renewal, at each generation, of the individual.Love implies death.To engender and to beget is to die. He who is born, by the very act of his birth kills.This is a sentence common to all beings, but carried out upon none more literally than upon the insect.In the first place, it is death for the father to love. It is indispensable that he should surrender all his powers, and exhaust the best part of his vitality; that he should perish in himself, to revive in him to whom he shall have transmitted his germ of resurrection.And for the mother, too, in most of the insect species, the condemnation is the same. She will love, give birth, and speedily die. Love for her shall not have its prize and recompense. She shall not see her sons. She shall not enjoy the consolations of death in seeing herself survive in her image.A great and harsh difference between this mother and the mothers of superior animals! The woman—or the female of the mammal—as a rule cherishes in her own body her beloved treasure, warms it with her own flame, and feeds it with her love. How envious would be the insect-mother, if she knew of this supreme maternal happiness! Butshemust seek of an ungenial nature, must demand of some other being—tree, plant, fruit, or perhaps the earth itself—that it will condescend to continue the work of her maternity. This is rigorous, but it is not cruel. Let us look at it seriously. If death separate the mother and the child, it is because they cannot live together; because they are strongly sundered by the opposite conditions of life and nutrition. The child, at first a lowly grub, larva, or worm, an obscure miner, a concealed nocturnal worker, must for a long time continue to feed upon the coarsest food, and sometimes even on death itself. She, the mother, who, winged and transfigured, has mounted to a higher life; and lives solely on the honied sweets of flowers,—how could she accustom herself to the shades, and the useful but abject circumstances in which her offspring grows strong? That which is salutary and vital for the tenebrous child of the earth would be fatal to an aërial mother, who has already fluttered in the warmth and genial light of heaven.It is needful for the due development of the child that its mother should provide it with a triple or quadruple cradle, and there depositit; not neglected, and without succour, but furnished with its first aliment—an aliment light and fitted for its feebleness, which it can find on its waking up into life. This done, she closes the door, seals it, and voluntarily excludes and interdicts herself from returning thither. Thenceforth she must cede her rights to the universal mother, who shall replace her—Nature.That in such a cradle the child should live commodiously,—that from its own body it should draw out a silky covering to line its plastic prison,—that finally, when sufficiently strong, it should issue forth under the influence of the heat,—this is self-explanatory, and we admire without being astonished. But what really excites our wonder is, that the mother,—a butterfly, or perhaps a beetle,—after the numerous changes through which she has passed, after her numerous sloughings, transitory slumbers, and metamorphoses, should remember, for her offspring's behoof, the place or plant where formerly she herself was nourished, and grew, and took her point of departure! It is a marvel which confounds the mind. Those creatures apparently the most heedless—the fly, or light-headed butterfly—at the moment when approaching death brightens them with the radiance of love, collect, as it were, their thoughts, and seem to revive their recollections. Then, without lapse or error, they flee away; and lo! the plant which was their own early residence, their birthplace, and their cradle, shall again become their home, and protect their offspring!All at once they show themselves prudent, foreseeing, and skilful.To obtain an entrance to this asylum, they practise unknown arts and display incredible address. How is this? What happens? Sometimes their weapons of war, diverted to other uses, become instruments of love; sometimes new and hitherto concealed apparatus,—frequently of an extremely complex character,—make their appearance; and yet all for this solitary act, for this single day.A curious book has been written on the mechanism and infinitely varied instrumentation with which insects are provided for the discharge of the maternal duty. Their implements are often charming from their precision, delicacy, and subtlety. It will suffice to particularize that of the rose-bush aphis,—so well described by Réaumur, as a saw whose two blades act in an inverse direction, and whose teeth are each a set of teeth.O unheard-of power of Love! Whether this divine workman prepares for them their tiny tools, or whether he inspires them to fashion their own by the effort and vehemency of the burning maternal desire, it matters not: you see them duly fabricated, and acting when wanted in a wholly unexpected manner.It is a simple task for the tribes of sociable insects which labour with the assistance and protection of a numerous republic; but it is infinitely arduous and painful for the solitary mothers, who, without auxiliary, spouse, or friend, undertake enormous enterprises, and frequently raise constructions which might be the work of giants,—such as the nest of the mason-wasp. One is lost in astonishment at the amount of patience and strength of will required for so colossal an edifice.This excessive toil ages the mother in a few days. She wears herself out, yet does not enjoy the fruit. Frequently the elaborate cradle serves for another. Too frequently a usurping stranger seizes upon it, profits by the meritorious work, and establishes there its progeny, which will not only consume the provision of the rightful tenant, but feed also on the unfortunate tenant himself!Who will not bestow a glance of pity on this great work, and a result of such uncertain character?In the burning days of July, when the narrow belt of forests surroundingFontainebleau concentrated upon it the summer heats, we were astonished at the incessant and continuous labour, despite the indolence of the season, of a solitary bee which was ever going and coming. Her indefatigable journeys always brought her near some vases of camelias and rose-bays. I saw her, still fair and shapely, of a beautiful brown mingled with black, returning, at regular intervals of about five minutes, with woven fragments of leaves, which she introduced through a deep aperture into the soil of the vase where she had made her nest.For three days she worked with undiminished ardour. There were no signs that she took the least food: constantly at her work, she appeared to have already abandoned all care for her own life.Her preoccupation was so great and her activity so eager that we were able to approach her very closely. Nothing frightened her; so that we could establish ourselves at our ease near her little nest, and observe her with as much patience as she herself brought to her work.On the fourth morning we found the opening closed, and we saw her no more. She had completed her task. Exhausted, but rejoicing at its conclusion, she had retired undoubtedly to some obscure recess to await her destiny.We proceeded delicately to loosen the soil around the sides of the vase, in order to examine into what she had done.At the bottom, resembling in shape a couple of thimbles, lay two cradles, and in these cradles two little ones. All the care had been for them: so many young, so many cells.Each was composed of six-and-twenty fragments of leaves. Réaumur, in a similar nest, counted but sixteen. Six of these fragments, which closed up the entrance, were perfectly round,—a remarkable fact, if we bear in mind that the instrument which achieved the work was by no means appropriate to it. Yet they were as accurately finished off as if done by a punch.The other portions of leaf, cut into ovals, and carefully placed one upon another in due accordance with the contour of the nest, resembled so many roofs designed by the indefatigable mother as a protectionagainst the wind and rain. At the bottom lay a little honey; the last and tender legacy of the mother, bequeathed by her to those whom she had abandoned for ever.We shall enjoy the satisfaction of seeing them weave their winter shelter. It will be pleasanter for them under our roof than at the bottom of the vase. The mother's intentions will be carefully carried out. Adopted, tended, and removed to Paris, the nymphs of Fontainebleau will take, one fine morning in spring, their flight above our windows, and, as young bees, will be able to gather, if not the honey of the heather, at least that of the Luxembourg.V.—THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.CHAPTER V.THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.[H][H]La Frileuse,—literally, "The chilly one."We have told the easiest and pleasantest story to relate, the story of the privileged creature for whom its mother has duly provided, and who is nourished and clothed by her efforts. But many—in truth, the greatest number—enter life destitute and necessitous. They fall naked into the great world.Poverty the audacious, necessity the ingenious, the severe internal travail of hunger and desire, stimulate and develop the energetic organs which come to their assistance.What organs? The great Swammerdam, the martyr of patience, was the first to distinguish them. With a piercing eye, examining the newly-hatched egg,—that dubious foundation!—he seized the opening lineaments of life, and marked in them the profound and decisive characters which make the mystery of the insect. He saw the little creature, with its gelatinous body, push forwardits mandible or jaws,—a distinct and complete organ, placed in front of the mouth, and visibly intended to nourish and protect the still feeble being.Behind this active apparatus he detected on the sides of the body a passive apparatus, a series of tiny mouths or valves (thestigmata) which await the air, and open to receive it.Ingenious precautions! The orphan born completely naked, and launched into life unprotected to undergo the most toilsome metamorphoses, is rendered competent for the task only by eating greedily from the moment of its birth, absorbing and devouring! It must eat always and everywhere, even in the least respirable atmosphere, and in unhealthy and deadly places. It is for this reason nature has endowed it with a slower, and, if I may so speak, a more suspicious circulation and respiration, than that of the superior creatures which live only in pure air. In these creatures, as in man, the blood continually flows to meet the air and be vivified by it. In the insect, on the contrary, the protecting apparatus which guards its lateral mouths are disposed in such a manner as to be able always to moderate, sift, and, if need be, exclude, the invading atmosphere. One is overcome with surprise by the infinite variety of the combinations designed for this end, the numerous mechanical and chemical arts of the most complicated character. To receive and yet not receive, to breathe without breathing, to preserve the control of what must nevertheless be a passive function, to trust and yet mistrust, to surrender and yet protect, is the difficult problem which life here proposed to itself, and of which it has found innumerable solutions. To give air to a grub! Behold, arrogant humanity, which callest thyself the centre of all things, the most laborious effort that has engrossed the powers of nature!Its circulation resembles that of the embryo in the bosom of its mother. But how much less favourable the condition of the insect! The fœtus is in immediate contact with the world through the soft maternal medium. The motherless insect embryo does not swim, like the other, in a sea of milk. It is cradled in the rude mould of the universal life; it travels therein at great peril, on the rude earth, from shock to shock.This fact the moderns have recognized,—the insect is an embryo. But who would suppose that this very circumstance would doom it to death? How rude a contradiction! An embryo launched into the thick of the fray, to be the victim of all—of birds, and even of insects. An embryo armed, it is true; and nothing is stranger than to see the soft grubs brandishing their threatening jaws, while their feeble body, deprived of all defence, is exposed on every side.Flight offers them but few chances; their best protection is night. And therefore they shun the light,—they live as they can under the ground, in the wood, or at least beneath the leaf. If this be true of the larvæ, the grubs, of what we call worms, we may say the same of the insect. For its first period (that of the larva) endures a considerable time, though its life as a nymph, and finally its third period, last but a very brief while. Numerous species (May-bugs, stag-beetles, and the like) have three to six years of a tenebrous existence, and only three months under the sun.Even the insects which live longest in the sun, like the bees and the ants, work willingly in obscurity; are partial to the shadows of their hives and ant-hills.We may assert as a general rule thatthe insect is the child of night.Most insects shun the day. But how can they avoid the air? Even in hot countries, the contact of the variable atmosphere with a live nude body, whose epidermis is not yet hardened, becomes infinitely painful. In our severe climates, each breath of air must produce the sensation of piercing arrows, of a million of fine needles. What would it be, O Heaven, for a poor human fœtus to issue, after a week or a fortnight, from its mother's womb, and instead of peacefully undergoing the transformations which strengthen it, to be subjected to them in a naked condition and in open day? What would be its sensations on quitting its soft asylum, and falling into the cold air? Yet such must be those of the insect, when, soft, feeble, assailable, and penetrable everywhere, still almost floating and gelatinous to the eye, it experiences the cold, and the wind, and the shock of so many painful accidents.Certain clothed species are a little better protected. Some arelodged in the heart of a fruit. Others (bees and ants) form a protecting community; but the immense majority are born solitary and naked.Some of our readers, always well clothed and warmed, will say, I am sure, that cold is an excellent thing, which stimulates the appetite and strengthens the frame. But those who have been poor will very well understand my preceding observations. For my part, recollections of my childhood convince me that cold is, in all truth, a punishment; you cannot get accustomed to it; its prolongation does not render its effect less severe. How keen a joy I felt (in rigorous winters) at each thaw which released me from my agitated, terrified, and uneasy condition, and secured the happy re-establishment of the internal harmony!I do not deny, however, that cold may not be a powerful tonic, which sharpens and braces up the mind, and draws from it fresh efforts of invention. Cold, as well as hunger—and perhaps hunger especially—is the great stimulus of the arts; hunger weakens, cold strengthens.It is the powerful inspirer of infinite swarms of those chilly creatures which seek before all things, as soon as they are born, the means of covering themselves. They are not in want of food; nature has everywhere prepared for them an ample banquet. All the vegetable kingdom, and a great part of the animal, are at their disposal; they might live tender and indolent, as the child sleeps at its ease on the maternal placenta which nourishes its slothfulness. But the cold irritates them; the cold damp air deadens and paralyzes their entrails; finally, the light wounds them. They can enjoy no repose until they have secured a shelter. In the lowest grade of life the smallest grub becomes an artist, and by weaving, and spinning, and carving has soon contrived a robe, and, as with a second skin over her too sensitive epidermis, has covered her suffering nakedness. Happy she who finds herself placed at the outset on a prepared soil, a cloth of warm wool, a fine fur: she does not fail to make in hot haste, according to our human fashion, a pretty paletot fitted to her figure; which, nevertheless, she leaves a little loose, like economical mothers for their young growing children, in whose case the garb too large to-day will be tight and well-fitting to-morrow.Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves, and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise arts which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with imperceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those which were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the seam afterwards fits into its harmoniousensemble.Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this little world: tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like. And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it.The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a suitable piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it, cut out a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This done, with their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor smooths down the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat, which they carry about with them, with the very finest silk.Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After having woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a variety of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example, embellish theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails.The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam about in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subterranean abodes.The labour is great. But among all the species an admirable justice prevails. Whoso works hard while a child, does little when an adult; andvice versâ. The bee, which in the larva state is richly fed by its parents, and always carried about and cradled, is destined hereafter to an exceedingly laborious life.On the contrary, another insect which, as a grub, has toiled, and woven, and spun, will having nothing to do in its later life but whisper love-phrases to the rose. I am speaking of Sir Butterfly.For the great majority, hard work is for infancy, for the larva or the grub; work twofold and excessive. On the one hand, the constant, urgent, and pressing search after the food craved for by animmense internal need; the necessity of recruiting and renewing its energies, of restoring the inherited organs, and developing new ones.The existence of these poor motherless creatures is divided between two severe conditions: toil, and growth through disease.For their moultings, or sloughings, are, in effect, a disease.The painful moment having arrived for the little creature to change its clothing, a clothing which clings to its flesh, it is seized with illness, abandons its leaf, and creeps languidly to some solitary asylum. If you saw it in such a soft, inert, and withered condition, so different from its natural state, you would say it was on the point of death. And many do, indeed, succumb at this laborious crisis.Passive, and suspended to a branch, it waits until nature shall complete its work,—until its epidermis be detached from the second skin beneath, recalling it to all the energies of life.It is then that you see the garb, which was formerly so brilliant, dry up and harden like a thenceforth useless thing, carried hither and thither by the wind.But before it will yield and separate, the invalid, despite of its weakness, must twist in every direction, and writhe, and swell, and contract, and employ all the efforts of a being in its strongest moments.At length it has conquered; the old sheath is rent; and I see the insect free, but bathed in sweat.Do not touch it yet, for the slightest pressure will wound. Of this it is aware, and lies perfectly motionless. It is pale, and almost swooning; it must wait patiently, before beginning to move, till its skin is less sensitive and its limbs are much firmer. Soon, fortunately, it will be invigorated by its food; it feels a terrible hunger, which restores its strength and prepares it for another sloughing. Such is its destiny. It is condemned to deliver itself continually in a series ofaccouchements, until it finally attains its latest transformation.If either the exertion or the pain inspire it with a transient gleam of thought, it would say, on each painful occasion: "Now it is ended! I have finished my task; I will rest in peace; this is my last change." To which Nature would respond: "Not yet! not yet! Thou art notyet engendered. What art thou? Nothing but a larva, a mask which is about to fall."What! A mask! and yet it wills and toils, strives and suffers, and sometimes seems more advanced than will be the being produced from it! So much industry and skill imprisoned in a skin which will immediately dry up and be blown away by the breeze!However this may be, it is seized one morning by an undefinable kind of irritability and disquiet,—by a mysterious impulse which excites it to undertake a new task. You would say that within itself another self exists, moving, and stirring, and following up a distinct purpose, and yearning to become—what? does it know? This I cannot assert; but after awhile you may see it acting, and acting sagaciously, as if inspired by a perfect knowledge. Its presentiment of the slumber which will shortly seize upon it, paralyze its forces, and surrender it helplessly to all its enemies, incites it to the sudden display of a novel activity. "Let us work well! Let us work quickly! For soon I shall sleep soundly."VI.—THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.CHAPTER VI.THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us pardon the early ages for the consolations and hopes which they drew from the strange drama represented by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which grave Egypt founded upon it. This drama tranquillized more hearts and wiped away more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of Eleusis.When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis, ever reproducing herself in eternal anguish, was snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle, and hushed her sobs.What is death? What is life? What is the awakening, or what the slumber? Do you not see this little miracle, this dumb confidant ofthe grave, which makes us the mock of destiny? It sleeps in the egg, and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it dies thrice—as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything. Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun.Where was it? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A deity has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for this beloved soul! Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely founded upon justice, on the impartial love of the Creator of all life.Accordingly, the widow draws from its death the brilliant pledge of the future, and gives utterance to this woman's cry:—"Merciful Heaven! do for my husband and for me what thou hast done for the insect. Do not grant less to man; do not grant to my best-beloved less than thou accordest to this brother of the gnat!"Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy? Has it completely eliminated the miraculous from nature?The inaugurator of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that the grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis of the future being.This is not all. Malpighi saw thenymphof the silkworm in its virgin slumber,already furnished with the attributes of its coming maternity,—containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would fecundate.And yet again, this is not all. Réaumur, in the oak-grub,in a grub scarcely a few hours old, found the eggs of the future butterfly. In other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself, as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs and children.It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no intermediary deaths; one single life is continuously carried on.All this seems clear, does it not? The ancient mystery has perished? Man has discovered, in its fulness, the secret of things?Réaumur does not think so; Réaumur himself, who has guided us so far. In recording his observations he does not appear satisfied, and confesses "that they still leave very much to be desired."[I][I]Réaumur, "Histoire des Insectes," tome i., p. 351.In truth, it is a thing to confound and almost to terrify the imagination, to think that a grub, at the outset no bigger than a thread, should include in itself all the elements of its moultings and metamorphoses; should contain its triple, and even octuple envelopes; nay more, the sheath or case of itsnymphaand its complete butterfly, all folded up one in another, with an immense apparatus of vessels, respiratory and digestive, of nerves for feeling and muscles for moving! A prodigious system of anatomy! first traced out in complete detail in Lyonnet's colossal work on the willow-grub. The twofold monster, endowed with a strong grub-stomach for the destruction of innumerable hard leaves, will possess ere long a light and delicate apparatus for extracting the honey of flowers. And yet the clothed creature, which contains in its organism a complete silk-manufactory, will almost immediately sweep away the complex system.One knows the gentle manœuvres by which nature conducts the young of the higher animals from the embryonic existence to the independent life, adapting the old organs to new functions. Here, this is not done. It is not a simple change of condition. The destination is not merely different, but contrary, with a violent contrast. Therefore, instruments fitted for an entirely novel existence are required, and the abolition and definitive sacrifice of the primitive organism.The revolution, which for all other beings is so well concealed, is here entirely thrown open. And we are enabled to scrutinize with our eyes this astonishingtour de forcein numerous grubs which undergo the great change in the light of day, suspended to the branch of a tree by a silken cable.The effort is worthy of our admiration and pity. To see yonder nymph, short and feeble, soft and gelatinous, without arms or paws, contriving, by the skill with which it expands and contracts its rings,to escape from the heavy and rough machine which it was at first, flinging aside its limbs, setting free its head, and—one hardly dares to record the fact—throwing off its body, and rejecting many of its principal internal organs!This little body, when it has thus escaped from its long heavy mask (living, nevertheless, but a moment since, a life full of energy), will dangle, and grow dry, and skilfully ascend to its silken fastening. There it prepares to fix itself in its new "Me" as a nymph, while its former "Me," tossed about by the wind, is speedily driven I know not whither.All is, and ought to be, changed.The legs will not again be the legs.It will need lighter organs. What can the child of the air, which can balance on the point of a blade of grass, do with those coarse short feet, armed with hooks, vent-holes, and so many heavy implements?The head will not be the head; at least, the enormous apparatus of mandibles will disappear, and also that of the muscles by which they were energetically moved. All is thrown aside with the mask. A colossal change! From a masticator the animal becomes a sucker. A flexible proboscis emerges.If anything in the grub appeared of a fundamental character, it was the digestive apparatus. Ah, well! this basis of its being is no more. The absorbing throat—the powerful stomach—the greedy entrails,—all are suppressed, or reduced nearly to nothing. What would they avail the new being which, in certain species of butterflies, dispenses withsustenance, has no mouth but by agreement, and is so completely freed from digestion that frequently it has not even an inferior orifice? It abandons without difficulty its thenceforth useless furniture, and expectorates the skin of its stomach!This is grand and magnificent,—no spectacle is grander! For life at such a point to change, to dominate over the organs, to rise victorious, so entirely free of the ancientEgo! To those who have revealed to us such a prodigy of transfiguration, from the bottom of my heart I say, "Thanks!"How marvellous the security in this being which abandons everything, which unhesitatingly dismisses its strong and solid existence, the complicated organism which just now wasitself, its own individuality! We call it itslarva, its mask; but why? The personality seems at least as energetic in the vigorous grub as in the delicate butterfly. And, therefore, it is most indubitably its individual being which it courageously leaves to shrivel up and perish, to become—what? Nothing reassuring, nothing but a little, soft, whitish substance.Open the nymph soon after it has spun its cocoon: in its shroud you shall find nothing but a kind of milky fluid, wherein you see, or fancy you see, certain dubious lineaments. After awhile you may, with a fine needle, separate these I know not what,—and figure to yourself that they are the limbs of the future butterfly. A frightful lacuna! For many species a moment occurs when nothing of the old any longer appears, and nothing of the new as yet has come. When Æson, cut in pieces, was thrown, in order to rejuvenate him, into the caldron of Medea, you would have found, on groping there, the limbs of Æson. But here there is nothing parallel.Trustfully, nevertheless, the mummy surrounds its body with its bands, docilely accepting the shadows, the inertness, and the captivity of the sepulchre. It feels in itself a force, araison d'être, acausa vivendi,—a reason for living still. And what reason? What cause? The vitality accumulated by its previous toil. All that, like a laborious grub, it has accumulated, is its obstacle to death,—its incapability of perishing,—the reason why it will immediately live again; and not only live, but with a light and tender existence, whose facility isproportioned exactly to the efforts which it makes in its anterior condition of life.Admirable compensation! When penetrating so deep down into life, I expected to encounter certain physical fatalities. And I found justice, immortality, and hope.Yes, antiquity was right, and modern science is right. It is death, and yet it is not death; let us call it if you will partial death. Is death ever otherwise? Is it not a new birth?Throughout my life I have remarked that each day I died and was born again; I have undergone many painful strugglings and laborious transformations. One more does not astonish me. Many and many times I have passed from the larva into the chrysalis, and into a more complete condition; the which, after awhile, incomplete under other relations, has put me in the way of accomplishing a new circle of metamorphoses.All this from me to me, but not less frommeto those who werestillme, who loved me, or made me, or, so long as I lived, whom I made.These, too, have been, or will be, my metamorphoses. Sometimes, a certain intonation or gesture which I detect makes me exclaim:—"Ah! this is a gesture or a tone of my father." I had not foreseen it, and if I had foreseen it, it would not have occurred; reflection had changed all; but, not thinking of it, I employed it. A tender emotion, a holy impulse seized me, when I felt my father thus living in myself. Are we two? Were we one? Oh! it was my chrysalis. And I—I play the same part for those who shall follow me, my children, or the children of my thought. I know, I feel, that besides the bases which I derived from my father, my ancestors and masters, besides the inheritance of artist-historian which I shall bequeath to others, germs existed within me which were never developed. Another, and perchance a better, man was within me, who has not arisen. Why were not the loftier germs which might have made me great, and the powerful wings of which I have sometimes felt myself possessed, displayed in life and action?These germs, though put aside, remain to me; too late for expansion in this life, perhaps, but in another,—who knows?An ingenious philosopher has remarked that if the human embryo, while imprisoned in the maternal bosom, might reason, it would say:—"I see myself endowed with organs of which here I can make no use,—limbs which do not move, a stomach and teeth which do not eat. Patience! these organs convince me that nature calls me elsewhere; a time will come when I shall have another residence, a life in which all these implements will find employment. They are standing still, they are waiting. I am but the chrysalis of a man!"VII.—THE PHŒNIX.CHAPTER VII.THE PHŒNIX.The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish mummy which just now lay before you dried and shrivelled, you see the new creature, the resuscitated, the phœnix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent in all the glory of youth.The very reverse ofourdestiny: commencing with bright and butterfly days, in later life we crawl and languish; while the insect commences with years of gloom, and from a long life of obscurity emerges into the youth in which it dies glorified.Let us be present at this departure. The warm breath of springhas awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one flower, awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation, how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to suffocate it?Some species—as, for example, the ants—experience so great a difficulty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release but for the opportune assistance of some power which, from without, hastens to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it from the trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty! which creates the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the child she has delivered, and herself begins its education and society!But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the prison, and introduce it to daylight and liberty."What key?—and how?" say you. "How can this soft and fluid being contrive to seize upon a firm, compact tissue, frequently doubled and immured by the alluvial accumulation of a protracted winter?"The circumstance embarrassesusgreatly, but Nature is not troubled. Means of the utmost simplicity suffice her; she eludes, and sports with, the difficulty. The butterfly of the silkworm, for instance, at the critical moment finds a file—where?—in its eye! This eye, with numerous facets, has a fine diamond point, which files through and severs the silken prison.Another, the cockchafer, shut up underground, suddenly discovers that it is a perfect mechanician. Of its whole body it makes a lever. Its posterior extremity furnishes it with a strong-pointed auger. It sinks solidly, anchors, and makes fast. From thispoint d'appuiit derives an enormous force, and with its robust shoulders uplifts the heavy clod, enlarges the aperture, finds at length the light, extends its unwieldy apparatus of wings and wing-cases, and flies as a gnat.Another deformed (or shapeless) miner, the mole-cricket, would never reach the surface if, to reascend from the depth of the earth, it had nottwo enormous hands, or rather two powerful rakes, which open up its way. Though hideous, it is not the less sensitive to the influence of spring, but it takes the precaution of never exposing its strange figure save to the doubtful rays of the moon. Its plaintive cry singularly affects the female; she yields to it, and makes her appearance, but to return again into the night and confide to the protecting shade the hope of her posterity.A frail aquatic insect, the gnat, on this important day assumes the daring mission of the navigator. It makes fresh use of its demitted envelope, and turns it into a bark. In this it stands upright, extends its new wings for sails, glides along the wave, and very frequently without shipwreck reaches the shore; where, when dried, the same wings will bear it off to the chase and the pursuit of pleasure. In an hour it appears a complete master of all these novel arts. It is the peculiarity of love to know without having been taught.Love is winged. Mythology is perfectly in the right. This is verified in the proper sense and without metaphor. In one brief moment, Nature displays a restless anxiety to fly towards the beloved object. All creatures rise above their own level, all mount towards the light, on the pinions of desire. The internal fire is also revealed in glowing colours. Every one decorates his person, every one wishes to please.The butterfly apparently looks upon you with the great velvety eyes which adorn its wings. Beetles of every species, like mobile stones, astonish by their brilliant reflexes, their burning vivacities. Finally, from the bosom of the shadows bursts the flame of love, naked and unveiled, in flashing stars!At such a moment it accomplishes the strangest transformations, and from the humblest masks issue, in violent contrast, the superbest individuals.A dull larva of the morass, which lives only by stratagem, becomes the brilliant amazon, the agile winged warrior, called Demoiselle (libellula). It is the only creature of its tribe which expresses the complete liberty of flight, holding the same rank among insects as the swallow among birds. Who has not followed with attentive gaze its thousand varied movements, its turns, and returns, and the infinitecircles which it makes with azure and emerald wings on the meadow or over the waters? A flight apparently capricious; but not really so, for it is a chase, a rapid and elegant extermination of myriads of insects. What seems to you a pastime, is the greedy absorption with which this brilliant creature of war feeds its season of love.
Such is the original type of a young world which in due time will be inhabited. The cocoa-palm will have its insects; the birds will pause on its boughs; men will gather its fruit. Wrecked ships and floating timbers, propelled by the sea, will bring there after awhile tenants of every kind.
Some of these islands, when extended, enlarged, and solidified, measure not less than twenty-five miles in circumference. Many are larger still; fertile, inhabited, and populous, like the Maldives.
The ambition of their architects might rest contented, you would think, with these vast creations. But to insure their fixity, theyhave increased their extent. The buttresses by which they strengthen their work at the bottom of the sea being prolonged and elevated, expand into banks, which link the isles to each other over an immense area. Along the line of burning life, in the tropic zone, these indefatigable builders have daringly intersected the sea and worked athwart its currents, and already are arresting the courses of our navigators.
New Caledonia is now surrounded by a reef of 145 leagues in length. The chain of the Maldive Islands measures 480 English miles. To the east of New Holland stretches a bank of polypes over 360 leagues, 127 of these without interruption. Finally, in the Pacific Ocean the mass known as the Dangerous Archipelago is about 400 leagues in length by 150 in breadth.
If they continue after this fashion, incessantly connecting their various piles of submarine masonry, they will perhaps realize the prophecy of Kirby, who discerned in the coral isles and reefs the possibility of a new world—a brilliant and fertile world; and in the course of centuries may accomplish the formation of a causeway, an immense bridge, connecting Asia with America.
IV.—LOVE AND DEATH.
IV.—LOVE AND DEATH.
CHAPTER IV.LOVE AND DEATH.Above the infinite elementary life,—that quasi-vegetable life in which generation is but, as it were, a-budding,—begins the distinct, individual, and complete organism whose strongly centralized electric network of nerves is able to sympathize directly with the rapid energy of its acts and resolutions.However humble the insect may seem in appearance, it is from the first independent of the immovable, expectant existence of all the inferior races. It is born entirely free from that communistic fatalism which merges the being of each in the life of all. It exists independently; it moves, goes, comes, advances or returns, changes its determination or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience to its wants, appetites, and caprices. It suffices for itself; it foresees, provides, defends, and boldly confronts the most unexpected chances.In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of personality?The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all at once admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the support and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy andabsorbent. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service which Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disencumber the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter, which acts as an obstacle to the growth of life; to save the latter from the consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its abundance.
CHAPTER IV.
LOVE AND DEATH.
Above the infinite elementary life,—that quasi-vegetable life in which generation is but, as it were, a-budding,—begins the distinct, individual, and complete organism whose strongly centralized electric network of nerves is able to sympathize directly with the rapid energy of its acts and resolutions.
However humble the insect may seem in appearance, it is from the first independent of the immovable, expectant existence of all the inferior races. It is born entirely free from that communistic fatalism which merges the being of each in the life of all. It exists independently; it moves, goes, comes, advances or returns, changes its determination or its direction at pleasure, or in obedience to its wants, appetites, and caprices. It suffices for itself; it foresees, provides, defends, and boldly confronts the most unexpected chances.
In this, then, do we not discern, as it were, a first glimpse of personality?
The individual stands out from the mass. He shows himself all at once admirably provided with the instruments necessary for the support and sustenance of the individual existence. He is born greedy andabsorbent. But this very absorbingness is exactly the service which Nature expects of him. It is his mission to purify and disencumber the world; to clear it of morbid or extinct animal matter, which acts as an obstacle to the growth of life; to save the latter from the consequences of its excessive fecundity, the danger of its abundance.
No other being, as we shall prove, exercises so great an influence upon our globe; no other throws itself into the condition of general existence with so vital an energy. But this extraordinary strength, in such disproportion to the size, bulk, and weight of the insect, is subject to a severe law; the rapid, absolute, and complete renewal, at each generation, of the individual.
Love implies death.To engender and to beget is to die. He who is born, by the very act of his birth kills.
This is a sentence common to all beings, but carried out upon none more literally than upon the insect.
In the first place, it is death for the father to love. It is indispensable that he should surrender all his powers, and exhaust the best part of his vitality; that he should perish in himself, to revive in him to whom he shall have transmitted his germ of resurrection.
And for the mother, too, in most of the insect species, the condemnation is the same. She will love, give birth, and speedily die. Love for her shall not have its prize and recompense. She shall not see her sons. She shall not enjoy the consolations of death in seeing herself survive in her image.
A great and harsh difference between this mother and the mothers of superior animals! The woman—or the female of the mammal—as a rule cherishes in her own body her beloved treasure, warms it with her own flame, and feeds it with her love. How envious would be the insect-mother, if she knew of this supreme maternal happiness! Butshemust seek of an ungenial nature, must demand of some other being—tree, plant, fruit, or perhaps the earth itself—that it will condescend to continue the work of her maternity. This is rigorous, but it is not cruel. Let us look at it seriously. If death separate the mother and the child, it is because they cannot live together; because they are strongly sundered by the opposite conditions of life and nutrition. The child, at first a lowly grub, larva, or worm, an obscure miner, a concealed nocturnal worker, must for a long time continue to feed upon the coarsest food, and sometimes even on death itself. She, the mother, who, winged and transfigured, has mounted to a higher life; and lives solely on the honied sweets of flowers,—how could she accustom herself to the shades, and the useful but abject circumstances in which her offspring grows strong? That which is salutary and vital for the tenebrous child of the earth would be fatal to an aërial mother, who has already fluttered in the warmth and genial light of heaven.
It is needful for the due development of the child that its mother should provide it with a triple or quadruple cradle, and there depositit; not neglected, and without succour, but furnished with its first aliment—an aliment light and fitted for its feebleness, which it can find on its waking up into life. This done, she closes the door, seals it, and voluntarily excludes and interdicts herself from returning thither. Thenceforth she must cede her rights to the universal mother, who shall replace her—Nature.
That in such a cradle the child should live commodiously,—that from its own body it should draw out a silky covering to line its plastic prison,—that finally, when sufficiently strong, it should issue forth under the influence of the heat,—this is self-explanatory, and we admire without being astonished. But what really excites our wonder is, that the mother,—a butterfly, or perhaps a beetle,—after the numerous changes through which she has passed, after her numerous sloughings, transitory slumbers, and metamorphoses, should remember, for her offspring's behoof, the place or plant where formerly she herself was nourished, and grew, and took her point of departure! It is a marvel which confounds the mind. Those creatures apparently the most heedless—the fly, or light-headed butterfly—at the moment when approaching death brightens them with the radiance of love, collect, as it were, their thoughts, and seem to revive their recollections. Then, without lapse or error, they flee away; and lo! the plant which was their own early residence, their birthplace, and their cradle, shall again become their home, and protect their offspring!
All at once they show themselves prudent, foreseeing, and skilful.To obtain an entrance to this asylum, they practise unknown arts and display incredible address. How is this? What happens? Sometimes their weapons of war, diverted to other uses, become instruments of love; sometimes new and hitherto concealed apparatus,—frequently of an extremely complex character,—make their appearance; and yet all for this solitary act, for this single day.
A curious book has been written on the mechanism and infinitely varied instrumentation with which insects are provided for the discharge of the maternal duty. Their implements are often charming from their precision, delicacy, and subtlety. It will suffice to particularize that of the rose-bush aphis,—so well described by Réaumur, as a saw whose two blades act in an inverse direction, and whose teeth are each a set of teeth.
O unheard-of power of Love! Whether this divine workman prepares for them their tiny tools, or whether he inspires them to fashion their own by the effort and vehemency of the burning maternal desire, it matters not: you see them duly fabricated, and acting when wanted in a wholly unexpected manner.
It is a simple task for the tribes of sociable insects which labour with the assistance and protection of a numerous republic; but it is infinitely arduous and painful for the solitary mothers, who, without auxiliary, spouse, or friend, undertake enormous enterprises, and frequently raise constructions which might be the work of giants,—such as the nest of the mason-wasp. One is lost in astonishment at the amount of patience and strength of will required for so colossal an edifice.
This excessive toil ages the mother in a few days. She wears herself out, yet does not enjoy the fruit. Frequently the elaborate cradle serves for another. Too frequently a usurping stranger seizes upon it, profits by the meritorious work, and establishes there its progeny, which will not only consume the provision of the rightful tenant, but feed also on the unfortunate tenant himself!
Who will not bestow a glance of pity on this great work, and a result of such uncertain character?
In the burning days of July, when the narrow belt of forests surroundingFontainebleau concentrated upon it the summer heats, we were astonished at the incessant and continuous labour, despite the indolence of the season, of a solitary bee which was ever going and coming. Her indefatigable journeys always brought her near some vases of camelias and rose-bays. I saw her, still fair and shapely, of a beautiful brown mingled with black, returning, at regular intervals of about five minutes, with woven fragments of leaves, which she introduced through a deep aperture into the soil of the vase where she had made her nest.
For three days she worked with undiminished ardour. There were no signs that she took the least food: constantly at her work, she appeared to have already abandoned all care for her own life.
Her preoccupation was so great and her activity so eager that we were able to approach her very closely. Nothing frightened her; so that we could establish ourselves at our ease near her little nest, and observe her with as much patience as she herself brought to her work.
On the fourth morning we found the opening closed, and we saw her no more. She had completed her task. Exhausted, but rejoicing at its conclusion, she had retired undoubtedly to some obscure recess to await her destiny.
We proceeded delicately to loosen the soil around the sides of the vase, in order to examine into what she had done.
At the bottom, resembling in shape a couple of thimbles, lay two cradles, and in these cradles two little ones. All the care had been for them: so many young, so many cells.
Each was composed of six-and-twenty fragments of leaves. Réaumur, in a similar nest, counted but sixteen. Six of these fragments, which closed up the entrance, were perfectly round,—a remarkable fact, if we bear in mind that the instrument which achieved the work was by no means appropriate to it. Yet they were as accurately finished off as if done by a punch.
The other portions of leaf, cut into ovals, and carefully placed one upon another in due accordance with the contour of the nest, resembled so many roofs designed by the indefatigable mother as a protectionagainst the wind and rain. At the bottom lay a little honey; the last and tender legacy of the mother, bequeathed by her to those whom she had abandoned for ever.
We shall enjoy the satisfaction of seeing them weave their winter shelter. It will be pleasanter for them under our roof than at the bottom of the vase. The mother's intentions will be carefully carried out. Adopted, tended, and removed to Paris, the nymphs of Fontainebleau will take, one fine morning in spring, their flight above our windows, and, as young bees, will be able to gather, if not the honey of the heather, at least that of the Luxembourg.
V.—THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.
V.—THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.
CHAPTER V.THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.[H][H]La Frileuse,—literally, "The chilly one."We have told the easiest and pleasantest story to relate, the story of the privileged creature for whom its mother has duly provided, and who is nourished and clothed by her efforts. But many—in truth, the greatest number—enter life destitute and necessitous. They fall naked into the great world.Poverty the audacious, necessity the ingenious, the severe internal travail of hunger and desire, stimulate and develop the energetic organs which come to their assistance.What organs? The great Swammerdam, the martyr of patience, was the first to distinguish them. With a piercing eye, examining the newly-hatched egg,—that dubious foundation!—he seized the opening lineaments of life, and marked in them the profound and decisive characters which make the mystery of the insect. He saw the little creature, with its gelatinous body, push forwardits mandible or jaws,—a distinct and complete organ, placed in front of the mouth, and visibly intended to nourish and protect the still feeble being.Behind this active apparatus he detected on the sides of the body a passive apparatus, a series of tiny mouths or valves (thestigmata) which await the air, and open to receive it.
CHAPTER V.
THE ORPHAN: ITS FEEBLENESS.[H]
[H]La Frileuse,—literally, "The chilly one."
[H]La Frileuse,—literally, "The chilly one."
We have told the easiest and pleasantest story to relate, the story of the privileged creature for whom its mother has duly provided, and who is nourished and clothed by her efforts. But many—in truth, the greatest number—enter life destitute and necessitous. They fall naked into the great world.
Poverty the audacious, necessity the ingenious, the severe internal travail of hunger and desire, stimulate and develop the energetic organs which come to their assistance.
What organs? The great Swammerdam, the martyr of patience, was the first to distinguish them. With a piercing eye, examining the newly-hatched egg,—that dubious foundation!—he seized the opening lineaments of life, and marked in them the profound and decisive characters which make the mystery of the insect. He saw the little creature, with its gelatinous body, push forwardits mandible or jaws,—a distinct and complete organ, placed in front of the mouth, and visibly intended to nourish and protect the still feeble being.
Behind this active apparatus he detected on the sides of the body a passive apparatus, a series of tiny mouths or valves (thestigmata) which await the air, and open to receive it.
Ingenious precautions! The orphan born completely naked, and launched into life unprotected to undergo the most toilsome metamorphoses, is rendered competent for the task only by eating greedily from the moment of its birth, absorbing and devouring! It must eat always and everywhere, even in the least respirable atmosphere, and in unhealthy and deadly places. It is for this reason nature has endowed it with a slower, and, if I may so speak, a more suspicious circulation and respiration, than that of the superior creatures which live only in pure air. In these creatures, as in man, the blood continually flows to meet the air and be vivified by it. In the insect, on the contrary, the protecting apparatus which guards its lateral mouths are disposed in such a manner as to be able always to moderate, sift, and, if need be, exclude, the invading atmosphere. One is overcome with surprise by the infinite variety of the combinations designed for this end, the numerous mechanical and chemical arts of the most complicated character. To receive and yet not receive, to breathe without breathing, to preserve the control of what must nevertheless be a passive function, to trust and yet mistrust, to surrender and yet protect, is the difficult problem which life here proposed to itself, and of which it has found innumerable solutions. To give air to a grub! Behold, arrogant humanity, which callest thyself the centre of all things, the most laborious effort that has engrossed the powers of nature!
Its circulation resembles that of the embryo in the bosom of its mother. But how much less favourable the condition of the insect! The fœtus is in immediate contact with the world through the soft maternal medium. The motherless insect embryo does not swim, like the other, in a sea of milk. It is cradled in the rude mould of the universal life; it travels therein at great peril, on the rude earth, from shock to shock.
This fact the moderns have recognized,—the insect is an embryo. But who would suppose that this very circumstance would doom it to death? How rude a contradiction! An embryo launched into the thick of the fray, to be the victim of all—of birds, and even of insects. An embryo armed, it is true; and nothing is stranger than to see the soft grubs brandishing their threatening jaws, while their feeble body, deprived of all defence, is exposed on every side.
Flight offers them but few chances; their best protection is night. And therefore they shun the light,—they live as they can under the ground, in the wood, or at least beneath the leaf. If this be true of the larvæ, the grubs, of what we call worms, we may say the same of the insect. For its first period (that of the larva) endures a considerable time, though its life as a nymph, and finally its third period, last but a very brief while. Numerous species (May-bugs, stag-beetles, and the like) have three to six years of a tenebrous existence, and only three months under the sun.
Even the insects which live longest in the sun, like the bees and the ants, work willingly in obscurity; are partial to the shadows of their hives and ant-hills.
We may assert as a general rule thatthe insect is the child of night.
Most insects shun the day. But how can they avoid the air? Even in hot countries, the contact of the variable atmosphere with a live nude body, whose epidermis is not yet hardened, becomes infinitely painful. In our severe climates, each breath of air must produce the sensation of piercing arrows, of a million of fine needles. What would it be, O Heaven, for a poor human fœtus to issue, after a week or a fortnight, from its mother's womb, and instead of peacefully undergoing the transformations which strengthen it, to be subjected to them in a naked condition and in open day? What would be its sensations on quitting its soft asylum, and falling into the cold air? Yet such must be those of the insect, when, soft, feeble, assailable, and penetrable everywhere, still almost floating and gelatinous to the eye, it experiences the cold, and the wind, and the shock of so many painful accidents.
Certain clothed species are a little better protected. Some arelodged in the heart of a fruit. Others (bees and ants) form a protecting community; but the immense majority are born solitary and naked.
Some of our readers, always well clothed and warmed, will say, I am sure, that cold is an excellent thing, which stimulates the appetite and strengthens the frame. But those who have been poor will very well understand my preceding observations. For my part, recollections of my childhood convince me that cold is, in all truth, a punishment; you cannot get accustomed to it; its prolongation does not render its effect less severe. How keen a joy I felt (in rigorous winters) at each thaw which released me from my agitated, terrified, and uneasy condition, and secured the happy re-establishment of the internal harmony!
I do not deny, however, that cold may not be a powerful tonic, which sharpens and braces up the mind, and draws from it fresh efforts of invention. Cold, as well as hunger—and perhaps hunger especially—is the great stimulus of the arts; hunger weakens, cold strengthens.
It is the powerful inspirer of infinite swarms of those chilly creatures which seek before all things, as soon as they are born, the means of covering themselves. They are not in want of food; nature has everywhere prepared for them an ample banquet. All the vegetable kingdom, and a great part of the animal, are at their disposal; they might live tender and indolent, as the child sleeps at its ease on the maternal placenta which nourishes its slothfulness. But the cold irritates them; the cold damp air deadens and paralyzes their entrails; finally, the light wounds them. They can enjoy no repose until they have secured a shelter. In the lowest grade of life the smallest grub becomes an artist, and by weaving, and spinning, and carving has soon contrived a robe, and, as with a second skin over her too sensitive epidermis, has covered her suffering nakedness. Happy she who finds herself placed at the outset on a prepared soil, a cloth of warm wool, a fine fur: she does not fail to make in hot haste, according to our human fashion, a pretty paletot fitted to her figure; which, nevertheless, she leaves a little loose, like economical mothers for their young growing children, in whose case the garb too large to-day will be tight and well-fitting to-morrow.
Those who on their birth come in contact with chill green leaves, and their lustrous glaze, are still more industrious. They practise arts which astonish the observer. Some raise enormous masses with imperceptible cables, and by mechanical processes analogous to those which were employed in removing and rearing the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. Others cut out figures purposedly irregular, which the seam afterwards fits into its harmoniousensemble.
Every industrial corporation may be found represented in this little world: tailors, weavers, felters, spinners, miners, and the like. And in each corporation you meet with species working each after its peculiar fashion, by the various processes appropriate to it.
The tailors work from a pattern. They mark out on the leaf a suitable piece; which they remove, and lay upon another leaf; tack it, cut out a second on the first model, and stitch them together. This done, with their scaly head they flatten the ribs, just as the tailor smooths down the seams with his iron. Then they line this coat, which they carry about with them, with the very finest silk.
Others work in mosaic, others in marquetry and veneering. After having woven the robe, they disguise it by artistically gluing to it a variety of surrounding materials. The aquatic insects, for example, embellish theirs with moss, lentils, mussels, or little snails.
The miners erect galleries between a couple of leaves, and roam about in them, constructing places of exit and ingress in their subterranean abodes.
The labour is great. But among all the species an admirable justice prevails. Whoso works hard while a child, does little when an adult; andvice versâ. The bee, which in the larva state is richly fed by its parents, and always carried about and cradled, is destined hereafter to an exceedingly laborious life.
On the contrary, another insect which, as a grub, has toiled, and woven, and spun, will having nothing to do in its later life but whisper love-phrases to the rose. I am speaking of Sir Butterfly.
For the great majority, hard work is for infancy, for the larva or the grub; work twofold and excessive. On the one hand, the constant, urgent, and pressing search after the food craved for by animmense internal need; the necessity of recruiting and renewing its energies, of restoring the inherited organs, and developing new ones.
The existence of these poor motherless creatures is divided between two severe conditions: toil, and growth through disease.
For their moultings, or sloughings, are, in effect, a disease.
The painful moment having arrived for the little creature to change its clothing, a clothing which clings to its flesh, it is seized with illness, abandons its leaf, and creeps languidly to some solitary asylum. If you saw it in such a soft, inert, and withered condition, so different from its natural state, you would say it was on the point of death. And many do, indeed, succumb at this laborious crisis.
Passive, and suspended to a branch, it waits until nature shall complete its work,—until its epidermis be detached from the second skin beneath, recalling it to all the energies of life.
It is then that you see the garb, which was formerly so brilliant, dry up and harden like a thenceforth useless thing, carried hither and thither by the wind.
But before it will yield and separate, the invalid, despite of its weakness, must twist in every direction, and writhe, and swell, and contract, and employ all the efforts of a being in its strongest moments.
At length it has conquered; the old sheath is rent; and I see the insect free, but bathed in sweat.
Do not touch it yet, for the slightest pressure will wound. Of this it is aware, and lies perfectly motionless. It is pale, and almost swooning; it must wait patiently, before beginning to move, till its skin is less sensitive and its limbs are much firmer. Soon, fortunately, it will be invigorated by its food; it feels a terrible hunger, which restores its strength and prepares it for another sloughing. Such is its destiny. It is condemned to deliver itself continually in a series ofaccouchements, until it finally attains its latest transformation.
If either the exertion or the pain inspire it with a transient gleam of thought, it would say, on each painful occasion: "Now it is ended! I have finished my task; I will rest in peace; this is my last change." To which Nature would respond: "Not yet! not yet! Thou art notyet engendered. What art thou? Nothing but a larva, a mask which is about to fall."
What! A mask! and yet it wills and toils, strives and suffers, and sometimes seems more advanced than will be the being produced from it! So much industry and skill imprisoned in a skin which will immediately dry up and be blown away by the breeze!
However this may be, it is seized one morning by an undefinable kind of irritability and disquiet,—by a mysterious impulse which excites it to undertake a new task. You would say that within itself another self exists, moving, and stirring, and following up a distinct purpose, and yearning to become—what? does it know? This I cannot assert; but after awhile you may see it acting, and acting sagaciously, as if inspired by a perfect knowledge. Its presentiment of the slumber which will shortly seize upon it, paralyze its forces, and surrender it helplessly to all its enemies, incites it to the sudden display of a novel activity. "Let us work well! Let us work quickly! For soon I shall sleep soundly."
VI.—THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.
VI.—THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.
CHAPTER VI.THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us pardon the early ages for the consolations and hopes which they drew from the strange drama represented by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which grave Egypt founded upon it. This drama tranquillized more hearts and wiped away more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of Eleusis.When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis, ever reproducing herself in eternal anguish, was snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle, and hushed her sobs.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MUMMY, NYMPH, OR CHRYSALIS.
Let us respect the childhood of the world. Let us pardon the early ages for the consolations and hopes which they drew from the strange drama represented by the Insect, the thoughts of immortality which grave Egypt founded upon it. This drama tranquillized more hearts and wiped away more tears than all the mysteries of Canopus or the revels of Eleusis.
When the mourning widow, the eternal Isis, ever reproducing herself in eternal anguish, was snatched from her beloved Osiris, she reposed her hope of a future reunion on the sacred beetle, and hushed her sobs.
What is death? What is life? What is the awakening, or what the slumber? Do you not see this little miracle, this dumb confidant ofthe grave, which makes us the mock of destiny? It sleeps in the egg, and afterwards sleeps again in the nymph. It is thrice born; and it dies thrice—as larva, nymph, and beetle. In each of these existences the larva or mask is the prefigurement of the succeeding existence. It prepares, begets, and hatches itself. From the most repulsive sepulchre it emerges sparkling. On the dust it shines; on the gray Egyptian plain, in its season of aridity, it shimmers, and eclipses everything. Its jewelled wing mirrors the all-powerful sun.
Where was it? In the foul shadow, in night and death. A deity has summoned it forth, and will yet do much more for this beloved soul! Sweet, tender ray! The hope was surely founded upon justice, on the impartial love of the Creator of all life.
Accordingly, the widow draws from its death the brilliant pledge of the future, and gives utterance to this woman's cry:—"Merciful Heaven! do for my husband and for me what thou hast done for the insect. Do not grant less to man; do not grant to my best-beloved less than thou accordest to this brother of the gnat!"
Has modern science swept away the ancient poesy? Has it completely eliminated the miraculous from nature?
The inaugurator of this science, Swammerdam, has discovered that the grub already contains the nymph; nay more, even the butterfly. In the grub he has detected the rudiment of the wing and proboscis of the future being.
This is not all. Malpighi saw thenymphof the silkworm in its virgin slumber,already furnished with the attributes of its coming maternity,—containing the eggs which, as a butterfly, it would fecundate.
And yet again, this is not all. Réaumur, in the oak-grub,in a grub scarcely a few hours old, found the eggs of the future butterfly. In other words, the infant insect, at that very stage when the grub itself, as Harvey points out, is simply a mobile egg, already possesses eggs and children.
It is the identity of three beings. It seems as if there could be no intermediary deaths; one single life is continuously carried on.
All this seems clear, does it not? The ancient mystery has perished? Man has discovered, in its fulness, the secret of things?
Réaumur does not think so; Réaumur himself, who has guided us so far. In recording his observations he does not appear satisfied, and confesses "that they still leave very much to be desired."[I]
[I]Réaumur, "Histoire des Insectes," tome i., p. 351.
[I]Réaumur, "Histoire des Insectes," tome i., p. 351.
In truth, it is a thing to confound and almost to terrify the imagination, to think that a grub, at the outset no bigger than a thread, should include in itself all the elements of its moultings and metamorphoses; should contain its triple, and even octuple envelopes; nay more, the sheath or case of itsnymphaand its complete butterfly, all folded up one in another, with an immense apparatus of vessels, respiratory and digestive, of nerves for feeling and muscles for moving! A prodigious system of anatomy! first traced out in complete detail in Lyonnet's colossal work on the willow-grub. The twofold monster, endowed with a strong grub-stomach for the destruction of innumerable hard leaves, will possess ere long a light and delicate apparatus for extracting the honey of flowers. And yet the clothed creature, which contains in its organism a complete silk-manufactory, will almost immediately sweep away the complex system.
One knows the gentle manœuvres by which nature conducts the young of the higher animals from the embryonic existence to the independent life, adapting the old organs to new functions. Here, this is not done. It is not a simple change of condition. The destination is not merely different, but contrary, with a violent contrast. Therefore, instruments fitted for an entirely novel existence are required, and the abolition and definitive sacrifice of the primitive organism.
The revolution, which for all other beings is so well concealed, is here entirely thrown open. And we are enabled to scrutinize with our eyes this astonishingtour de forcein numerous grubs which undergo the great change in the light of day, suspended to the branch of a tree by a silken cable.
The effort is worthy of our admiration and pity. To see yonder nymph, short and feeble, soft and gelatinous, without arms or paws, contriving, by the skill with which it expands and contracts its rings,to escape from the heavy and rough machine which it was at first, flinging aside its limbs, setting free its head, and—one hardly dares to record the fact—throwing off its body, and rejecting many of its principal internal organs!
This little body, when it has thus escaped from its long heavy mask (living, nevertheless, but a moment since, a life full of energy), will dangle, and grow dry, and skilfully ascend to its silken fastening. There it prepares to fix itself in its new "Me" as a nymph, while its former "Me," tossed about by the wind, is speedily driven I know not whither.
All is, and ought to be, changed.The legs will not again be the legs.It will need lighter organs. What can the child of the air, which can balance on the point of a blade of grass, do with those coarse short feet, armed with hooks, vent-holes, and so many heavy implements?
The head will not be the head; at least, the enormous apparatus of mandibles will disappear, and also that of the muscles by which they were energetically moved. All is thrown aside with the mask. A colossal change! From a masticator the animal becomes a sucker. A flexible proboscis emerges.
If anything in the grub appeared of a fundamental character, it was the digestive apparatus. Ah, well! this basis of its being is no more. The absorbing throat—the powerful stomach—the greedy entrails,—all are suppressed, or reduced nearly to nothing. What would they avail the new being which, in certain species of butterflies, dispenses withsustenance, has no mouth but by agreement, and is so completely freed from digestion that frequently it has not even an inferior orifice? It abandons without difficulty its thenceforth useless furniture, and expectorates the skin of its stomach!
This is grand and magnificent,—no spectacle is grander! For life at such a point to change, to dominate over the organs, to rise victorious, so entirely free of the ancientEgo! To those who have revealed to us such a prodigy of transfiguration, from the bottom of my heart I say, "Thanks!"
How marvellous the security in this being which abandons everything, which unhesitatingly dismisses its strong and solid existence, the complicated organism which just now wasitself, its own individuality! We call it itslarva, its mask; but why? The personality seems at least as energetic in the vigorous grub as in the delicate butterfly. And, therefore, it is most indubitably its individual being which it courageously leaves to shrivel up and perish, to become—what? Nothing reassuring, nothing but a little, soft, whitish substance.
Open the nymph soon after it has spun its cocoon: in its shroud you shall find nothing but a kind of milky fluid, wherein you see, or fancy you see, certain dubious lineaments. After awhile you may, with a fine needle, separate these I know not what,—and figure to yourself that they are the limbs of the future butterfly. A frightful lacuna! For many species a moment occurs when nothing of the old any longer appears, and nothing of the new as yet has come. When Æson, cut in pieces, was thrown, in order to rejuvenate him, into the caldron of Medea, you would have found, on groping there, the limbs of Æson. But here there is nothing parallel.
Trustfully, nevertheless, the mummy surrounds its body with its bands, docilely accepting the shadows, the inertness, and the captivity of the sepulchre. It feels in itself a force, araison d'être, acausa vivendi,—a reason for living still. And what reason? What cause? The vitality accumulated by its previous toil. All that, like a laborious grub, it has accumulated, is its obstacle to death,—its incapability of perishing,—the reason why it will immediately live again; and not only live, but with a light and tender existence, whose facility isproportioned exactly to the efforts which it makes in its anterior condition of life.
Admirable compensation! When penetrating so deep down into life, I expected to encounter certain physical fatalities. And I found justice, immortality, and hope.
Yes, antiquity was right, and modern science is right. It is death, and yet it is not death; let us call it if you will partial death. Is death ever otherwise? Is it not a new birth?
Throughout my life I have remarked that each day I died and was born again; I have undergone many painful strugglings and laborious transformations. One more does not astonish me. Many and many times I have passed from the larva into the chrysalis, and into a more complete condition; the which, after awhile, incomplete under other relations, has put me in the way of accomplishing a new circle of metamorphoses.
All this from me to me, but not less frommeto those who werestillme, who loved me, or made me, or, so long as I lived, whom I made.These, too, have been, or will be, my metamorphoses. Sometimes, a certain intonation or gesture which I detect makes me exclaim:—"Ah! this is a gesture or a tone of my father." I had not foreseen it, and if I had foreseen it, it would not have occurred; reflection had changed all; but, not thinking of it, I employed it. A tender emotion, a holy impulse seized me, when I felt my father thus living in myself. Are we two? Were we one? Oh! it was my chrysalis. And I—I play the same part for those who shall follow me, my children, or the children of my thought. I know, I feel, that besides the bases which I derived from my father, my ancestors and masters, besides the inheritance of artist-historian which I shall bequeath to others, germs existed within me which were never developed. Another, and perchance a better, man was within me, who has not arisen. Why were not the loftier germs which might have made me great, and the powerful wings of which I have sometimes felt myself possessed, displayed in life and action?
These germs, though put aside, remain to me; too late for expansion in this life, perhaps, but in another,—who knows?
An ingenious philosopher has remarked that if the human embryo, while imprisoned in the maternal bosom, might reason, it would say:—"I see myself endowed with organs of which here I can make no use,—limbs which do not move, a stomach and teeth which do not eat. Patience! these organs convince me that nature calls me elsewhere; a time will come when I shall have another residence, a life in which all these implements will find employment. They are standing still, they are waiting. I am but the chrysalis of a man!"
VII.—THE PHŒNIX.
VII.—THE PHŒNIX.
CHAPTER VII.THE PHŒNIX.The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish mummy which just now lay before you dried and shrivelled, you see the new creature, the resuscitated, the phœnix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent in all the glory of youth.The very reverse ofourdestiny: commencing with bright and butterfly days, in later life we crawl and languish; while the insect commences with years of gloom, and from a long life of obscurity emerges into the youth in which it dies glorified.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PHŒNIX.
The drama is complete. From the gray or blackish mummy which just now lay before you dried and shrivelled, you see the new creature, the resuscitated, the phœnix, blithely escaping, to shine resplendent in all the glory of youth.
The very reverse ofourdestiny: commencing with bright and butterfly days, in later life we crawl and languish; while the insect commences with years of gloom, and from a long life of obscurity emerges into the youth in which it dies glorified.
Let us be present at this departure. The warm breath of springhas awakened the plants; its banquet is prepared. More than one flower, awaiting it, secretes its honey. It delays, because to-day that impenetrable envelope which ensured its safety becomes for a moment its obstacle. Enfeebled and fatigued by so great a transformation, how shall it break through the too solid cradle which threatens to suffocate it?
Some species—as, for example, the ants—experience so great a difficulty, that the captive, probably, would never effect its release but for the opportune assistance of some power which, from without, hastens to extricate it, to deliver it (so to speak), and separate it from the trammels of its swaddling-clothes. Fortunate difficulty! which creates the bond between the two ages, attaches the liberator to the child she has delivered, and herself begins its education and society!
But, for the majority of insects, the liberator is no other than Nature. This mother, inexhaustible in tenderness and invention, gives to the little one the key which will open the barrier, pierce the prison, and introduce it to daylight and liberty.
"What key?—and how?" say you. "How can this soft and fluid being contrive to seize upon a firm, compact tissue, frequently doubled and immured by the alluvial accumulation of a protracted winter?"
The circumstance embarrassesusgreatly, but Nature is not troubled. Means of the utmost simplicity suffice her; she eludes, and sports with, the difficulty. The butterfly of the silkworm, for instance, at the critical moment finds a file—where?—in its eye! This eye, with numerous facets, has a fine diamond point, which files through and severs the silken prison.
Another, the cockchafer, shut up underground, suddenly discovers that it is a perfect mechanician. Of its whole body it makes a lever. Its posterior extremity furnishes it with a strong-pointed auger. It sinks solidly, anchors, and makes fast. From thispoint d'appuiit derives an enormous force, and with its robust shoulders uplifts the heavy clod, enlarges the aperture, finds at length the light, extends its unwieldy apparatus of wings and wing-cases, and flies as a gnat.
Another deformed (or shapeless) miner, the mole-cricket, would never reach the surface if, to reascend from the depth of the earth, it had nottwo enormous hands, or rather two powerful rakes, which open up its way. Though hideous, it is not the less sensitive to the influence of spring, but it takes the precaution of never exposing its strange figure save to the doubtful rays of the moon. Its plaintive cry singularly affects the female; she yields to it, and makes her appearance, but to return again into the night and confide to the protecting shade the hope of her posterity.
A frail aquatic insect, the gnat, on this important day assumes the daring mission of the navigator. It makes fresh use of its demitted envelope, and turns it into a bark. In this it stands upright, extends its new wings for sails, glides along the wave, and very frequently without shipwreck reaches the shore; where, when dried, the same wings will bear it off to the chase and the pursuit of pleasure. In an hour it appears a complete master of all these novel arts. It is the peculiarity of love to know without having been taught.
Love is winged. Mythology is perfectly in the right. This is verified in the proper sense and without metaphor. In one brief moment, Nature displays a restless anxiety to fly towards the beloved object. All creatures rise above their own level, all mount towards the light, on the pinions of desire. The internal fire is also revealed in glowing colours. Every one decorates his person, every one wishes to please.
The butterfly apparently looks upon you with the great velvety eyes which adorn its wings. Beetles of every species, like mobile stones, astonish by their brilliant reflexes, their burning vivacities. Finally, from the bosom of the shadows bursts the flame of love, naked and unveiled, in flashing stars!
At such a moment it accomplishes the strangest transformations, and from the humblest masks issue, in violent contrast, the superbest individuals.
A dull larva of the morass, which lives only by stratagem, becomes the brilliant amazon, the agile winged warrior, called Demoiselle (libellula). It is the only creature of its tribe which expresses the complete liberty of flight, holding the same rank among insects as the swallow among birds. Who has not followed with attentive gaze its thousand varied movements, its turns, and returns, and the infinitecircles which it makes with azure and emerald wings on the meadow or over the waters? A flight apparently capricious; but not really so, for it is a chase, a rapid and elegant extermination of myriads of insects. What seems to you a pastime, is the greedy absorption with which this brilliant creature of war feeds its season of love.