III.—THE INSECT, THE AGENT OF NATURE.CHAPTER III.THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.The insect has not my languages. He neither speaks by voice nor physiognomy. In what manner, then, does he express himself?He speaks by his energies.1st. By the immense destructive influence he exercises on the superabundance of Nature, on a swarm of lingering or morbid lives which he hastens to sweep away.2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are among our therapeutic agents).3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human inventions.This is the subject of our second book.Let us first attack the point where he wounds us most, and seems the auxiliary of death: his immense, ardent, and indefatigable work of destruction. Let us contemplate him in history, and begin at the remotest epoch.In answer to our littlenesses, our disgusts, our terrors, to the narrow and egotistical judgments which we bring to bear upon such subjects, we must recall the great and necessary reactions of Nature.It has not advanced with the order of a continuous flood, but with refluxes and recoils back upon itself, which have enabled it to compass a perfect harmony. Our short-sighted survey, frequently arrested by these apparently retrograde movements, grows alarmed, takes fright, and misconceives the character of the whole.It is peculiar to the Infinite Love, which is continuously creating, to raise every created thing to the Infinite. But in this very infinity, it stimulates a creation of antagonisms which shall reduce the extent of the preceding. If we see it produce monstrous destroyers, be sure that they are destined, as a remedy and a repression, to check some monsters of fecundity.The herbivorous insects have had the task of keeping under the alarming vegetable accumulations of the primeval world.But these herbivora exceeding all law and all reason, the insectivorous insects were created to confine them within limits.The latter, robust and terrible, the tyrants of creation by their weapons and their wings, would have been the conquerors of the conquerors, and have driven to extremities the feebler species, if, above all the insect world and its weak powers of flight, had not risen on mighty wing a superior tyrant—the Bird. The haughty libellula was carried off by the swallow.By these successive agencies of destruction, however, production has not been suppressed, but restrained, and the species balanced in such wise that all endure and live. The more a species is pruned, the morefertile it becomes. Does it exceed? Immediately the superabundance is equilibrized by the new fecundity which is given to its destroyers.Ye men of this lingering epoch,—sons of the lean and sober West—brought up in the little, close, carefully tended, pared, and picked gardens, which you call "wide cultivation,"—enlarge, I pray you, your conceptions; extend them, and endeavour to imagine something greater than these petty corners, if you would comprehend anything of the earth's primitive forces; of the abundance and superabundance which she displayed when, soaked with warm mists, her bosom heaved with the glow of her first youth.The hotter countries of our present globe still show something of this profusion, though in a pale decay. Africa, which over the greater portion of its area has lost its waters, preserves as a souvenir in its happier zones that enormous and swollen herb, or herbaceous tree, the baobab. The inextricable forests of Guiana and Brazil, in their labyrinthine chaotic confusion of wild plants which, without rule or measure, envelop and choke the colossal trees, corrupt them, and bury them in theirdébris, are but imperfect images of the great ancient Chaos. The only beings impure enough to endure its impurity and breathe its deadly exhalations, are great-bellied reptiles, unwieldy frogs, green caymans, and serpents swollen with filth and venom. And such would have been the inhabitants of earth. Unable to draw breath in the horrible suffocation, she could never have given forth that pure air in which man alone can live.Accordingly, from on high pounced down the bird, and, plunging into the gulf, carried back to the sky on the tops of the lofty forests some one of these monsters. But its incessant struggle would have been vain against their abominable fecundity, if, from below, myriads of nibblers had not lightened the accumulation, cleansed the frightful lairs, and thrown open to the arrows of the sun the filth under which earth was panting. The humblest insects accomplished the gigantic work which made earth inhabitable: they devoured chaos."Small means," you say, "and great results! How could these little beings come to the aid of an infinity?" You would not cherish the doubt, if you had been ever a witness of the awakening of the silkworms,when, one morning, they are hatched with that vast hunger no abundance of leaves can satisfy. Their proprietor has supposed himself in a position to content them with a rich and beautiful plantation of mulberry-trees; but it counts for nothing. You supply them with forests, and they still ask for more. At a distance of twenty or thirty yards you hear a strange uninterrupted buzzing; a murmur like that of brooks incessantly flowing, and incessantly grinding and wearing out the pebbles. Nor are you mistaken: it is a brook, a torrent, a boundless river of living matter, which, under the grand mechanism of so many minute instruments, sounds, and resounds, and murmurs, passing from the vegetable life to that of insects, and softly but invincibly bases itself on animality.To return to the primeval age. The most terrible destroyers, the most implacable assailants, which penetrated the lowermost rottenness of the great chaos, which at a higher level delivered the tree from the pressure of its parasites, and finally mounted to its branches, and brightened up the livid shadows,—these were the benefactors of species yet to come. Their uninterrupted work of unconquerable destruction reduced within reasonable limits the excess in which Nature was almost lost. They opened up splendid, free, and unencumbered spaces; and the monsters, banished from the gulf where they swarmed, grew more and more barren, and by that great revelation of the forest were exposed to the child of Light,—the Bird.A profound agreement and genial fellowship were established between the latter and his protagonist, the child of Night, the Insect, which had thrown open the abyss, and delivered into his power the enemy. Consider, moreover, that in proportion as an exuberant nourishment fortified and exalted the insect, when its blood was intoxicated by so many burning plants, a ferocity previously unknown prevailed, and the fiercer and bolder species no longer limited themselves to undermining theretreatsof the monsters, but attacked themonstersalso. Stings, augers, cupping-glasses, trenchant teeth, sharpened pincers, an arsenal of unknown and as yet unnamed arms, came into existence, were elongated and whetted for assault upon the living matter. They were needed. They proved to be the lancet which cut the putrescentsore of the rising world. This latter had nourished and multiplied the feebly animalized myriads of torpid worms and pale-blooded larvæ, a ghastly and also the lowest life, which gained by passing through that burning crucible of keen existence, the superior insect-race.I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger, firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size. Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man proportionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk of Luxor.Vast energies of absorption, concentrating in these insects enormous foci of forces, translated themselves into the light by the energies of colour. To these, in species where life was more elevated, succeeded the moral energies. The superbly barbarous heroes, thescarabæi, were exterminated by the modest citizen-species, the ants and bees, in which the secret of beauty was harmony.Such is the whole history of insects. But to whatever height our inquiries may conduct us, let us not mistake the point of departure, —the useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared the globe.Is their work terminated? By no means. Immense zones remain in what may still be called an ancient condition, condemned to a terrible and unwholesome fecundity. In the centre of America the richest forests of the world seem ever to repel the approach of man, who enters them only to die. His arms, enfeebled by fever, have not even strength enough to collect their treasures. If a tree fall across his path, it becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the indifferent adventurer. He turns aside, and you may trace his circuit through the tall herbage. Fortunately the termites do not recoil so easily. If they find themselves confronted by a tree, they do not avoid it, do not turn its flank. They attack it bravely in the front, set to work as many labourers as are necessary—millions, perhaps: in two or three days the tree is devoured, and the road open.The great law of nature, and in these countries the law of safety, is the rapid destruction of everything decaying, languishing, stagnant, and therefore injurious; its ardent purification in the crucible of life. And that crucible is, before all things, the insect. We must not blame its fury of absorption. Who thinks of accusing the flame? The flame is worthy of reproach only when it does not burn. And, in like manner, that living fire, the insect, is created to devour. Necessity demands that it should be eager, cruel, blind, and of an implacable appetite. It can have no sobriety, no moderation, no pity. All the virtues of man and of superior beings would be nonsense which one cannot even imagine. Can you conceive of an insect with the sensibility and tenderness of the dog? which should weep like the beaver? which should nourish the aspirations and poetry of the nightingale? or, finally, the compassionateness of man? Such an insect would be incapable; thoroughly unfit for its profession as the anatomist, dissector, and destroyer—we may say, more justly, the universal medium of nature, which, precipitating death by suppressing long periods of decay, in this way accelerates the brilliant return of life. Thus disembarrassed and free, it says, with a savage pleasure, "No maladies, no old age! Shame uponall decay! Hail to eternal youth! Let every creature die which lives beyond a day!"Observe that the furious eagerness of the winged insects, which seem to be the agents of death, is frequently a cause of life. By an incessant persecution of the sick flocks, enfeebled by hot damp airs, they ensure their safety. Otherwise they would remain stupidly resigned, and hour after hour grow less capable of motion, gloomier and more morbid in the bonds of fever, until they could rise no more. The inexorable spur knows, however, the secret of putting them on their legs; though with trembling limbs, they take to flight; the insect never quits them, presses them, urges them, and conducts them, bleeding, to the wholesome regions of the dry lands and the living waters, where, growing discontented, their furious guide abandons them, and returns to the pestilent vapours, to its realm of death.In the Soudan, in Africa, a little insect, the Nâm fly, directs with a sovereign authority the migrations of the flocks. In the dry season it rages against the camel; it audaciously ventures into the ear of the elephant. The giant is resistlessly driven forward by its winged shepherds, to escape the fires of the south, and to seek the fresh winds of the north. On the other hand, the oxen, through its management, remain with their Arab master peacefully in the genial southern pastures.The most terrible of insects—the great Guiana ants—are valued precisely for their devouring power. Without them, no effectual means would exist of thoroughly cleansing the homes of man of all the obscure broods which infest the shadows, and swarm in the timbers and framework, in the most imperceptible crevices. One morning the black army appears at the door of the house: an army of sanitary inspectors. Man retires, gives place to them, and evacuates his dwelling. "Enter, ladies; come and go at your pleasure; make yourselves quite at home." It would not be safe for the owner to remain, since it is a law with these scrupulous visitors to leave no living thing in the track of their march. In the first place, every insect,—the largest as well as the minutest,—and their eggs, however well-concealed, perish. Then the smaller animals—frogs, adders, field-mice;—none escape. The place isthoroughly cleansed, for the smallest remains are conscientiously devoured.The great spiders of the Antilles, without piquing themselves on accomplishing a work of purification so terrible and so complete, labour nevertheless very industriously to secure the cleanliness of human habitations. They will not suffer any disgusting insect to exist. They are excellent servants—much cleaner than the slaves. Therefore men value them, and purchase them as indispensable domestics. Markets exist where spiders are regularly bought and sold.In Siberia, the spider enjoys the consideration to which it can everywhere put forward so many claims. That region of the farthest North, whose very brief summer is not the less infested with gnats and flies, finds a benefactor in the useful insect which industriously hunts the swarms for man's advantage. Its consummate prudence, its superior ability, its prescience of atmospheric variations and climatic phases, have so exalted the idea which the Siberians have formed of it, that many of their tribes refer the creation of the world to a gigantic spider.IV.—THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.CHAPTER IV.THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.A hunter of small birds, in an ingenious academical memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox: "Their recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the vine and the potato."How should this be? The disease, which first broke out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-protectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, in 1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against their invisible enemies.This hypothesis, supported with much wit and ability, and apparently grounded on facts and dates, rests wholly on one basis, and if it fails, crumbles to the ground.It supposes that the birds have been efficaciously protected by the law, and that, in twelve years, they have been so able to multiply as to become masters of the field, the tyrants and exterminators of the useful insect-species, and that, in fine, the latter have unfortunately almost disappeared.To this three replies may be given:—1st. The birds havenotmultiplied. We must not go for the truth to theBulletin des Lois(the Statute-book), but to fowlers and bird-catchers. And they reply:—"So many birds have been destroyed since the enactment of the law for their benefit, that in certain countries sport has actually become impossible, because there are no more to kill."In Provence, in the very localities where the gnats are insupportable (and the birds, therefore, most precious),—in the Camargue,—the sportsmen, in default of edible birds, now kill the swallows. They place themselves on the watch at the points where the winged legions pass in files, and slaughter several victims at one discharge.2nd. The insects have by no means been destroyed by the birds. Ask of the agriculturists what species has disappeared. Let them search ever so keenly, and they will not find that a solitary species has diminished. On the contrary, in the years referred to we have seen them increase, and grow, and flourish, and nothing prevents them from making war at their pleasure on the invisible animalcules.Not an insect-species is wanting; but, on the contrary, some careful observers tell us, in their books on Hunting or Natural History, that numerous species of birds will soon become extinct.3rd. Birds are not, as the author of the memoir calls them, "unintelligent assassins." Far from this, they kill by preference the most injurious insects. The time at which they carry on a really murderous war is when they are feeding their young. But what do they feedthem with? With very few insectivorous insects; the latter, armed and mailed—carabi and stag-beetles—covered with metallic scales, equipped with hooks and pincers, of an indestructible vitality, would be a horrible food for the young of the warbler, who, before such a provision, would assuredly take to flight. This is not the kind of aliment the sagacious mother seeks for her offspring; but soft and, as it were, milky insects, fat and succulent larvæ, fine little tender caterpillars,—all herbivorous, fructivorous, and leguminivorous animals; exactly those which do the greatest mischief in our fields and gardens.Accordingly, the great labour of the bird against the insect precisely coincides with the labour of the husbandman.For the rest, we are far from saying, as the author referred to makes us say, that the bird is the sole purifier of creation. One must be blind, and indeed senseless, not to see that he shares this mission with the insect. The action, too, of the latter is undoubtedly more efficacious in the pursuit of a world of living atoms, which the insect, whose eyes are microscopes, detects and pounces upon in numerous obscure corners, inaccessible to the bird. The bird, on the other hand, is the essential purifier of everything demanding long-sightedness and the power of flight,—as, for example, the frightful clouds of invisible animalcules which float and swim in the air, and therefore pass into our lungs.As a rule, the equilibrium of species is desirable. All are more or less useful. We willingly join with the author of the paper referred to in the wish that those insects which prey upon the smaller species might be specially distinguished and spared. The peasant destroys them indiscriminately, without knowing that by killing, for instance, the dragon-fly (orlibellula)—the brilliant murderess which slays a thousand insects daily—he is helping the latter: becomes the auxiliary of the insects, the preserver and propagator of the enemies which devour his substance. The terrible cicindela does not fly so high, but with its crossed daggers, or rather the two scimitars which serve it for jaws, accomplishes a swift and almost incredible havoc among the smaller insects. Take care, then, and respect it. Do not listen to the child who is dazzled by the beauty of its wings, nor, to please him, impaleon the needle-point your admirable insect-hunter, the efficacious auxiliary of the agriculturist!The carabi,—immense warrior-tribes armed to the very teeth, and displaying an ardent activity beneath their heavy coats of mail,—are the true guardians of your fields; and day and night, without holiday or repose, protect your crops. They themselves never touch the smallest blade or seed. Their sole occupation is to capture thieves, and they ask for no other reward than the thieves' bodies.Others toil underground. The innocent lobworm, which pierces and stirs up the soil, gets ready in a marvellously excellent manner the muddy and clayey earths which are deficient in evaporation. Others, in company with the mole, hunt far down in the depths the cruel enemy of agriculture, the horribly voracious larva of the destructive cockchafer, which, for three years, has been preying on the roots beneath the surface.The insectivorous insects put forth undeniable claims to the protection of man, whose allies they are. But even among the herbivora there are useful destroyers of harmful plants. The useless, pungent, and in every sense disagreeable nettle, which scarcely a single quadruped will deign to touch, fifty species of insects, in fellowship with ourselves, labour to destroy.A very beautiful class of insects, some rich in outward garb, and others in intelligence, are theNecrophori, which render us the important service of clearing away all dead matter from the soil. Nature, which finds them souseful, has treated them truly as her favourites, honouring them with splendid costumes, and making them both industrious and ingenious in the discharge of their functions. It is a remarkable circumstance that, notwithstanding their sinister office, they are far from being wild, but are very sociable if the need arises, and understand how to unite their forces, combine their energies, and act in concert. In brief,—these honest undertakers and grave-diggers are the brilliant aristocracy of the insect nation.It is evident that Nature's ideas are not the same as ours. She loads the most useful with rewards, whatever the nature of their work. For instance, theGeotrupes, which clears away the dung, is clothed in sapphire in payment of its service. The celebratedColeopteronof Egypt, the sacredAteuchusof the tombs,[J]appears glorified with an emerald aureola.[J]TheAteuchus sacer, or Sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians.Who shall describe all the services rendered by these scavengers? Yet we are not just in our dealings with them. It happened to me, one April, when I was about to transplant to my garden some dahlias which had passed the winter in the orchard, to discover that the humidity of the air of Nantes, and the compact and imporous clayey soil, had rotted the tubers. A bevy of insects were at work upon them, and usefully engaged in purging this shocking centre of dissolution. The gardener was very indignant, and ready enough to accuse them of the evil which they were endeavouring to remedy.The enemy of damp gardens, the snail (Helix), is pursued by an insect,[K]theDrylus, which lies in wait for it, and, the better to hunt it up, mounts on its back, and makes it carry him, seizes a favourable opportunity, and on the snail re-entering its shell, enters also, lives with it and upon it. A snail lasts him about a fortnight. Then he passes on to another and a larger, and then to a third still larger. He requires three in all. In the third, as he is about to change into a pupa, the drylus makes the place clean, and, to sleep conveniently, seizes on the substantial house of the enemy which has nourished him.[K]The larva of theDrylus flavescens.There could be no more useful task than to enlighten the peasant on the distinction that ought to be made between insects useful to agriculture and insects which are noxious; or those which may be turned to advantage in various sciences,—and especially in Chemistry,—which, it is probable, will yet discover unexpected resources in beings endowed with so copious and intense a vitality. In this respect, a very honourable work of initiation has been undertaken by the eminent naturalist who has so skilfully organized the museum at Rouen. All his pupils have preserved a grateful recollection of their teacher; and it is to one of them I owe the following summary of an original and instructive lecture on the Insect as Food."A prejudice much to be regretted, and a ridiculous fastidiousness, has debarred our Western peoples from one of the richest and most exquisite sources of nourishment. What right have they who devour tainted game, and unclean birds,—what right have the lovers of the oyster, that slimy mollusc, to reject the nourishment supplied by the Insect World?"Burgundy has the good sense to profit, without any feeling of silly disgust, by the excellent mollusc which peoples its vineyards,—I mean the snail,—which is very good with butter and salads, and a dish as wholesome for the chest as it is agreeable to the mouth and profitable to the stomach."A celebratedsavant—Lalande—dared to take a step further in advance, and to venture upon the caterpillar, rising thus another step above our prejudices. It is to him we owe our knowledge of the fact that the caterpillar tastes like almonds, and the spider like hazel-nuts. He addicted himself to the latter, which he found more delicate."—I should think so. In every sense, the spider is a superior being."Many insects are so nutritious and savoury that they have been specially selected by ladies as a diet likely to renew their life, beauty, and youth. The Romans of the Later Empire recovered the ample outlines of the Cornelias of the Commonwealth by the use of theCossus.[L]The sultanas of the East, of those voluptuous lands where love seeksthe rounded, swelling figure, make their slaves bring them a supply ofBlaps,[M]and idling in their gardens, to the music of leaping fountains, imbibe from the succulent insect an eternal youthfulness.[L]The Goat-Moth Caterpillar.[M]The women of Egypt, it is said, eat theBlaps sulcatacooked with butter."In Brazil, the Portuguese extracts from the Malalis of the bamboo, when the tree wears its nuptial flower, a kind of fresh butter for the table; and eats the ants in sweetmeats, at the moment that their wings uplift them on the breeze like an aspiration of love."But generally the insect, apart from its real value, has been hunted by the peasants whose tillage it destroyed. It plundered them of their food, and, in revenge, they themselves have fed uponit. The terrible locust, whose vast increase has so often imperilled the East, has been, on that very account, the more eagerly pursued and devoured by the Orientals. The story runs that the Caliph Omar, when seated at his family table, observing a locust alight there, read inscribed upon its wing:—'We hatch nine and ninety eggs; if we laid a hundred, we should devastate the world.'"Fortunately the locust is the manna of Asia. Who does not know that the prophets, musing in the caves of Carmel, ate nothing else? The Mohammedan anchorites adopted the samerégime. One day a person said to Omar:—'What think you of locusts?' 'That I would fain have a basketful.' Soon afterwards the supply failed him. It was with difficulty his servant found a single insect; whereupon he, delighted and grateful, exclaimed, 'Allah is great!'"Even at the present day locusts are sold throughout the East, and are eaten in the café as a dessert and a delicacy. Ships are loaded with them, and they are bought and sold by the cask."Here, then, we have insects exceptionally nutritious and substantial. What prevents us from making use of them? What scruple hinders us from active and useful reprisals against them?"At this part of his discourse, the orator found his audience, consisting mainly of intelligent Norman peasants, wrapped in deep attention, as at those points of the debates of the British Parliament when the accustomed cry arises of "Hear! Hear!"He had foreseen such a moment; and having loaded his table with some of the insects most dreaded by agriculturists, he seized them, crunched them, and swallowed them gravely, with this strong speech, which will not be without fruit:—"They have eaten us: let us eat them!"V.—A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.CHAPTER V.A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves; are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language except for its own members.For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among them towards the close of their existence,—for one brief moment, it is true,—a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival of love.They speak through the rare attractions with which they are invested,—through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,—throughthe fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of extraordinary toilets. They speak in their very lustre, and some species reveal their inner flame by a visible torch.They lavish with royal magnificence their last days. And wherefore should they economize, when to-morrow they die? Break forth then, O life of splendour! Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sapphires and rubies! And let that incandescent ardour, that torrent of existence, that cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out in one common, rapid flood!There is not space in our museums for the proper display of the prodigious, the unbounded variety of decoration with which Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify the hymeneal of the insect and to emparadise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur having had the patience to show me in due succession genus after genus, species after species, the whole of his immense collection, I was astounded—in truth, I was stupefied—almost terrified by the inexhaustible energy—I was going to say fury—of invention which Nature displayed. I was overcome—I closed my eyes, and begged for a truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded, and became confused. But she, she would not let me go; she inundated and overwhelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admirable monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus—no lessbrilliant than formidable; some in embrowned steel, shot with yellow—others in silken hoods, embroidered with black velvet; these with fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich mahogany ground; those in pomegranate-coloured velvet lit up with gold; others in luminous, indescribable azures, relieved by jet-black beads; and others, again, bright in metallic streaks alternating with heavy velvet.It was as if they wished to say:—"We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina never wore. Do you wish for feathers? behold us radiant in plumage which the humming-bird cannot equal; or if you prefer leaves, we can imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood—in fact, all kinds of substances—there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand,—it is an insect!"Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a people so redoubtable; with a burning brain I issued from the magic cave; and for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks danced and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my retina their wild, strange revel.And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as in nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion,—especially in the burning climes where they abound and superabound,—where everything is in harmony with them,—where the air, the water, the flora, impregnated with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal hosts in the madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly renewed by impatient death?The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable furnaces in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried on. The fantastic faëry of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with that of the animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries—not songs—form the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the woods and the savannahs, relieve each other,—hoarse and vibrating, but regular, as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert.Some by day, others by night; and perfectly distinct also at each of the three periods of the day,—morn, and noon, and evening. They disquiet the traveller, inasmuch as they reproduce our human voices or sounds, and seem ironical or mocking. One cries, another whistles, another sighs. This strikes like an alarm, that like a hammer, while a third imitates the tones of a bagpipe. The vast plains re-echo the mighty voice of the cariama. And that of the serpent-conqueror, the courageous kamichi, harsh and strong, echoing over the marshes, makes the savage tremble, for he thinks he hears the spirits passing.At evening, with the song of the grasshoppers, the croaking of the frogs, the shriek of the owls, and the lamentations of the vampires, mingles the howl of the apes; until a hiss, which seems drawn from a wounded bosom, silences all, and spreads a universal terror, because it indicates the presence of the sharp-clawed prowler, the swift jaguar.In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-choked sighs,—you place your foot upon them, and with terror discover that they are solid! that the surface is composed of great alligators, with their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic herbs! Let a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their heads and put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assemblage rise from the slime in all their horror! But is this all?—Even these monsters which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them. The piranha, or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs with its saw-like teeth the latter's tail, and carries it off before it can wheel round. The cayman, nearly always, mutilated in this manner, would perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it. The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as it passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have been wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the quadrupeds? The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is waged without pause in the deep waters,—in the waters living and overflowing with life, but with death also,—where is realized to the letter a rapid and furious suicide of Nature,—Nature devouring in order to re-create itself!The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The exalted vitality, revealed among the gadflies and the mosquitoes, by their thirst of blood, is shown in other species by their enchanting colours, their caprices of design, their singularities of form, which either astonish us or terrify. TheBuprestis imperialis, proud of its green cuirass powdered all over with dust of gold, seems to have passed through the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and enriched itself on the way. TheBuprestis chrysochlorus, of a yellower green, flutters to and fro like a mounted gem. TheArlequinof Guiana,—a gigantic mower, armed with tremendous antennæ and prodigious legs to traverse the innumerable obstacles offered by the tall herbage,—is marked with black commas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable hieroglyphs,—a being doubly strange and doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for the sake of harmonizing colours not usually brought side by side, the artist traces a number of wavy and broken lines, which soften and blend them into complete accord.Those gentle and social insects, the butterflies, covering the banks with their winged tribes, transform the whole prairie into an enchanting flowery carpet. The butterfly of butterflies, the glorious butterfly of Brazil, of a rich azure lit up by shifting gleams, softly hovers, in the warm hours, above the waters crowned by the imperial dome of the blossomy forests. A pacific and splendid creature, it seems the innocent king of all the puissant nature. Others, scarcelyless beautiful, follow in its train; and ever and ever more the glorious host, in floating azure, follows the current of the stream.Such, then, are the tongues of Love; for the boundless rainbow of all these colours is simply its varied expression. And for what purpose, if love itself ought to appear without an intermediary?Already, in our colder lands, the timid glow-worm, motionless under the hedgerow, suffers its little lamp to shine and guide through the night the lover to his love.In Italy it moves to and fro, and its flame has acquired wings. I was much struck by it, at the hot springs of Acqui, in Piedmont, where sulphur everywhere prevails; the wild dance of the tiny lights seemed stimulated by the fires lurking in the entrails of the earth. In Brazil the very leaves overflow with phosphorus. How should aught be wanting for the illumination of the bridal-joy of the insect? That marvel, under the tropics, glitters everywhere and enchants everything. Two hundred species are known, which Nature has gifted with the poetic faculty of breathing forth flame, and charming their great festival with the poesy of light.A graceful German lady, Mademoiselle Mérian, having been transplanted to these zones of fire, has related in naïve language the alarm which she experienced on seeing their insect wonders. The daughter and grand-daughter of excellent and laborious engravers, herself an artist and of well-informed mind, she has produced, in Latin, Dutch, and French, an admirable and picturesque work on the Insects of Surinam. The learned lady, in an exemplary life of misfortunes and virtues, had but one weakness (who has not one?)—the love of Nature. She quitted Germany for Holland, attracted by its unique and brilliant collections of the treasures of the two worlds. Then, as these did not suffice her, she visited Guiana, where she painted for several years. She combined in the same picture,—an excellent method,—the insect, the plant on which it lives, and the reptile which lives on the insect. Thoroughly conscientious, she sought out and posed her formidable models, of which, nevertheless, she was much afraid. Once, when the Indian savages had brought her a basket of insects, she was sleeping after her work. But in her chaste slumber she was disturbed by a strange dream. Shethought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew inflamed; it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room seemed filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true. The basket was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw that the volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (fulgores); their song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love.In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows of the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects which he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted on the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and fixes them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep off serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and carefully replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their amorous work. There is a pretty Indian proverb: "Carry away the fire-fly, but return it to the place from which thou carriedst it."Who can fail to be affected by their flame? It follows the movement of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow of our respiration; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart. It expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its emotion agitates also that tremendous torch.What lies at the bottom? the visible desire, the effort to please and to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies with its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy cast, plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow, fading and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons, and storms of the violent loves of the South.The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the American sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes upon it as her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim. Burning, she places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish.There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph of audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoningthem in gauze, she wreathes the animated flames in glowing necklaces, and rolls them around her waist in girdles of fire. The queens of the ball are crowned with an infernal diadem of living topazes, of throbbing emeralds, which flicker or gleam (through suffering or love?). A brilliant but funereal decoration, of sinister magnetism, whose charm is enhanced by a sentiment of death. They dance; the waning flame associates its tender gleams with the languishing glances of a deep black eye. They dance; without end and without reason, without pity or remembrance of the amorous light dying and fading on their bosom, and having no power to say: "Replace me where you captured me!"
III.—THE INSECT, THE AGENT OF NATURE.
III.—THE INSECT, THE AGENT OF NATURE.
CHAPTER III.THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.The insect has not my languages. He neither speaks by voice nor physiognomy. In what manner, then, does he express himself?He speaks by his energies.1st. By the immense destructive influence he exercises on the superabundance of Nature, on a swarm of lingering or morbid lives which he hastens to sweep away.2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are among our therapeutic agents).3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human inventions.
CHAPTER III.
THE INSECT AS THE AGENT OF NATURE IN THE ACCELERATION OF DEATH AND LIFE.
The insect has not my languages. He neither speaks by voice nor physiognomy. In what manner, then, does he express himself?
He speaks by his energies.
1st. By the immense destructive influence he exercises on the superabundance of Nature, on a swarm of lingering or morbid lives which he hastens to sweep away.
2nd. He speaks also by his visible energies, especially in the moment of love, his colours, his fires, his poisons (many of which are among our therapeutic agents).
3rd. He speaks by his arts, which might fecundate our human inventions.
This is the subject of our second book.
Let us first attack the point where he wounds us most, and seems the auxiliary of death: his immense, ardent, and indefatigable work of destruction. Let us contemplate him in history, and begin at the remotest epoch.
In answer to our littlenesses, our disgusts, our terrors, to the narrow and egotistical judgments which we bring to bear upon such subjects, we must recall the great and necessary reactions of Nature.
It has not advanced with the order of a continuous flood, but with refluxes and recoils back upon itself, which have enabled it to compass a perfect harmony. Our short-sighted survey, frequently arrested by these apparently retrograde movements, grows alarmed, takes fright, and misconceives the character of the whole.
It is peculiar to the Infinite Love, which is continuously creating, to raise every created thing to the Infinite. But in this very infinity, it stimulates a creation of antagonisms which shall reduce the extent of the preceding. If we see it produce monstrous destroyers, be sure that they are destined, as a remedy and a repression, to check some monsters of fecundity.
The herbivorous insects have had the task of keeping under the alarming vegetable accumulations of the primeval world.
But these herbivora exceeding all law and all reason, the insectivorous insects were created to confine them within limits.
The latter, robust and terrible, the tyrants of creation by their weapons and their wings, would have been the conquerors of the conquerors, and have driven to extremities the feebler species, if, above all the insect world and its weak powers of flight, had not risen on mighty wing a superior tyrant—the Bird. The haughty libellula was carried off by the swallow.
By these successive agencies of destruction, however, production has not been suppressed, but restrained, and the species balanced in such wise that all endure and live. The more a species is pruned, the morefertile it becomes. Does it exceed? Immediately the superabundance is equilibrized by the new fecundity which is given to its destroyers.
Ye men of this lingering epoch,—sons of the lean and sober West—brought up in the little, close, carefully tended, pared, and picked gardens, which you call "wide cultivation,"—enlarge, I pray you, your conceptions; extend them, and endeavour to imagine something greater than these petty corners, if you would comprehend anything of the earth's primitive forces; of the abundance and superabundance which she displayed when, soaked with warm mists, her bosom heaved with the glow of her first youth.
The hotter countries of our present globe still show something of this profusion, though in a pale decay. Africa, which over the greater portion of its area has lost its waters, preserves as a souvenir in its happier zones that enormous and swollen herb, or herbaceous tree, the baobab. The inextricable forests of Guiana and Brazil, in their labyrinthine chaotic confusion of wild plants which, without rule or measure, envelop and choke the colossal trees, corrupt them, and bury them in theirdébris, are but imperfect images of the great ancient Chaos. The only beings impure enough to endure its impurity and breathe its deadly exhalations, are great-bellied reptiles, unwieldy frogs, green caymans, and serpents swollen with filth and venom. And such would have been the inhabitants of earth. Unable to draw breath in the horrible suffocation, she could never have given forth that pure air in which man alone can live.
Accordingly, from on high pounced down the bird, and, plunging into the gulf, carried back to the sky on the tops of the lofty forests some one of these monsters. But its incessant struggle would have been vain against their abominable fecundity, if, from below, myriads of nibblers had not lightened the accumulation, cleansed the frightful lairs, and thrown open to the arrows of the sun the filth under which earth was panting. The humblest insects accomplished the gigantic work which made earth inhabitable: they devoured chaos.
"Small means," you say, "and great results! How could these little beings come to the aid of an infinity?" You would not cherish the doubt, if you had been ever a witness of the awakening of the silkworms,when, one morning, they are hatched with that vast hunger no abundance of leaves can satisfy. Their proprietor has supposed himself in a position to content them with a rich and beautiful plantation of mulberry-trees; but it counts for nothing. You supply them with forests, and they still ask for more. At a distance of twenty or thirty yards you hear a strange uninterrupted buzzing; a murmur like that of brooks incessantly flowing, and incessantly grinding and wearing out the pebbles. Nor are you mistaken: it is a brook, a torrent, a boundless river of living matter, which, under the grand mechanism of so many minute instruments, sounds, and resounds, and murmurs, passing from the vegetable life to that of insects, and softly but invincibly bases itself on animality.
To return to the primeval age. The most terrible destroyers, the most implacable assailants, which penetrated the lowermost rottenness of the great chaos, which at a higher level delivered the tree from the pressure of its parasites, and finally mounted to its branches, and brightened up the livid shadows,—these were the benefactors of species yet to come. Their uninterrupted work of unconquerable destruction reduced within reasonable limits the excess in which Nature was almost lost. They opened up splendid, free, and unencumbered spaces; and the monsters, banished from the gulf where they swarmed, grew more and more barren, and by that great revelation of the forest were exposed to the child of Light,—the Bird.
A profound agreement and genial fellowship were established between the latter and his protagonist, the child of Night, the Insect, which had thrown open the abyss, and delivered into his power the enemy. Consider, moreover, that in proportion as an exuberant nourishment fortified and exalted the insect, when its blood was intoxicated by so many burning plants, a ferocity previously unknown prevailed, and the fiercer and bolder species no longer limited themselves to undermining theretreatsof the monsters, but attacked themonstersalso. Stings, augers, cupping-glasses, trenchant teeth, sharpened pincers, an arsenal of unknown and as yet unnamed arms, came into existence, were elongated and whetted for assault upon the living matter. They were needed. They proved to be the lancet which cut the putrescentsore of the rising world. This latter had nourished and multiplied the feebly animalized myriads of torpid worms and pale-blooded larvæ, a ghastly and also the lowest life, which gained by passing through that burning crucible of keen existence, the superior insect-race.
I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger, firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size. Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man proportionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk of Luxor.Vast energies of absorption, concentrating in these insects enormous foci of forces, translated themselves into the light by the energies of colour. To these, in species where life was more elevated, succeeded the moral energies. The superbly barbarous heroes, thescarabæi, were exterminated by the modest citizen-species, the ants and bees, in which the secret of beauty was harmony.Such is the whole history of insects. But to whatever height our inquiries may conduct us, let us not mistake the point of departure, —the useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared the globe.
I know nothing upon earth which seems stronger, firmer, more durable, and more formidable than those miniature rhinoceros-like cuirassiers, which traverse earth as quickly as the great mammal traverses it heavily and slowly. The carabi, the galeritas, the stag-beetles, which carry with so much ease armour far more formidable than that of the Middle Ages, reassure us only by their size. Here strength is relatively formidable. Were a man proportionally strong, he might take in his arms the obelisk of Luxor.
Vast energies of absorption, concentrating in these insects enormous foci of forces, translated themselves into the light by the energies of colour. To these, in species where life was more elevated, succeeded the moral energies. The superbly barbarous heroes, thescarabæi, were exterminated by the modest citizen-species, the ants and bees, in which the secret of beauty was harmony.
Such is the whole history of insects. But to whatever height our inquiries may conduct us, let us not mistake the point of departure, —the useful nibblers and miners, which have elaborated and prepared the globe.
Is their work terminated? By no means. Immense zones remain in what may still be called an ancient condition, condemned to a terrible and unwholesome fecundity. In the centre of America the richest forests of the world seem ever to repel the approach of man, who enters them only to die. His arms, enfeebled by fever, have not even strength enough to collect their treasures. If a tree fall across his path, it becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the indifferent adventurer. He turns aside, and you may trace his circuit through the tall herbage. Fortunately the termites do not recoil so easily. If they find themselves confronted by a tree, they do not avoid it, do not turn its flank. They attack it bravely in the front, set to work as many labourers as are necessary—millions, perhaps: in two or three days the tree is devoured, and the road open.
The great law of nature, and in these countries the law of safety, is the rapid destruction of everything decaying, languishing, stagnant, and therefore injurious; its ardent purification in the crucible of life. And that crucible is, before all things, the insect. We must not blame its fury of absorption. Who thinks of accusing the flame? The flame is worthy of reproach only when it does not burn. And, in like manner, that living fire, the insect, is created to devour. Necessity demands that it should be eager, cruel, blind, and of an implacable appetite. It can have no sobriety, no moderation, no pity. All the virtues of man and of superior beings would be nonsense which one cannot even imagine. Can you conceive of an insect with the sensibility and tenderness of the dog? which should weep like the beaver? which should nourish the aspirations and poetry of the nightingale? or, finally, the compassionateness of man? Such an insect would be incapable; thoroughly unfit for its profession as the anatomist, dissector, and destroyer—we may say, more justly, the universal medium of nature, which, precipitating death by suppressing long periods of decay, in this way accelerates the brilliant return of life. Thus disembarrassed and free, it says, with a savage pleasure, "No maladies, no old age! Shame uponall decay! Hail to eternal youth! Let every creature die which lives beyond a day!"
Observe that the furious eagerness of the winged insects, which seem to be the agents of death, is frequently a cause of life. By an incessant persecution of the sick flocks, enfeebled by hot damp airs, they ensure their safety. Otherwise they would remain stupidly resigned, and hour after hour grow less capable of motion, gloomier and more morbid in the bonds of fever, until they could rise no more. The inexorable spur knows, however, the secret of putting them on their legs; though with trembling limbs, they take to flight; the insect never quits them, presses them, urges them, and conducts them, bleeding, to the wholesome regions of the dry lands and the living waters, where, growing discontented, their furious guide abandons them, and returns to the pestilent vapours, to its realm of death.
In the Soudan, in Africa, a little insect, the Nâm fly, directs with a sovereign authority the migrations of the flocks. In the dry season it rages against the camel; it audaciously ventures into the ear of the elephant. The giant is resistlessly driven forward by its winged shepherds, to escape the fires of the south, and to seek the fresh winds of the north. On the other hand, the oxen, through its management, remain with their Arab master peacefully in the genial southern pastures.
The most terrible of insects—the great Guiana ants—are valued precisely for their devouring power. Without them, no effectual means would exist of thoroughly cleansing the homes of man of all the obscure broods which infest the shadows, and swarm in the timbers and framework, in the most imperceptible crevices. One morning the black army appears at the door of the house: an army of sanitary inspectors. Man retires, gives place to them, and evacuates his dwelling. "Enter, ladies; come and go at your pleasure; make yourselves quite at home." It would not be safe for the owner to remain, since it is a law with these scrupulous visitors to leave no living thing in the track of their march. In the first place, every insect,—the largest as well as the minutest,—and their eggs, however well-concealed, perish. Then the smaller animals—frogs, adders, field-mice;—none escape. The place isthoroughly cleansed, for the smallest remains are conscientiously devoured.
The great spiders of the Antilles, without piquing themselves on accomplishing a work of purification so terrible and so complete, labour nevertheless very industriously to secure the cleanliness of human habitations. They will not suffer any disgusting insect to exist. They are excellent servants—much cleaner than the slaves. Therefore men value them, and purchase them as indispensable domestics. Markets exist where spiders are regularly bought and sold.
In Siberia, the spider enjoys the consideration to which it can everywhere put forward so many claims. That region of the farthest North, whose very brief summer is not the less infested with gnats and flies, finds a benefactor in the useful insect which industriously hunts the swarms for man's advantage. Its consummate prudence, its superior ability, its prescience of atmospheric variations and climatic phases, have so exalted the idea which the Siberians have formed of it, that many of their tribes refer the creation of the world to a gigantic spider.
IV.—THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.
IV.—THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.
CHAPTER IV.THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.A hunter of small birds, in an ingenious academical memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox: "Their recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the vine and the potato."How should this be? The disease, which first broke out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-protectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, in 1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against their invisible enemies.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.
A hunter of small birds, in an ingenious academical memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox: "Their recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the vine and the potato."
How should this be? The disease, which first broke out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-protectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, in 1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against their invisible enemies.
This hypothesis, supported with much wit and ability, and apparently grounded on facts and dates, rests wholly on one basis, and if it fails, crumbles to the ground.
It supposes that the birds have been efficaciously protected by the law, and that, in twelve years, they have been so able to multiply as to become masters of the field, the tyrants and exterminators of the useful insect-species, and that, in fine, the latter have unfortunately almost disappeared.
To this three replies may be given:—
1st. The birds havenotmultiplied. We must not go for the truth to theBulletin des Lois(the Statute-book), but to fowlers and bird-catchers. And they reply:—"So many birds have been destroyed since the enactment of the law for their benefit, that in certain countries sport has actually become impossible, because there are no more to kill."
In Provence, in the very localities where the gnats are insupportable (and the birds, therefore, most precious),—in the Camargue,—the sportsmen, in default of edible birds, now kill the swallows. They place themselves on the watch at the points where the winged legions pass in files, and slaughter several victims at one discharge.
2nd. The insects have by no means been destroyed by the birds. Ask of the agriculturists what species has disappeared. Let them search ever so keenly, and they will not find that a solitary species has diminished. On the contrary, in the years referred to we have seen them increase, and grow, and flourish, and nothing prevents them from making war at their pleasure on the invisible animalcules.
Not an insect-species is wanting; but, on the contrary, some careful observers tell us, in their books on Hunting or Natural History, that numerous species of birds will soon become extinct.
3rd. Birds are not, as the author of the memoir calls them, "unintelligent assassins." Far from this, they kill by preference the most injurious insects. The time at which they carry on a really murderous war is when they are feeding their young. But what do they feedthem with? With very few insectivorous insects; the latter, armed and mailed—carabi and stag-beetles—covered with metallic scales, equipped with hooks and pincers, of an indestructible vitality, would be a horrible food for the young of the warbler, who, before such a provision, would assuredly take to flight. This is not the kind of aliment the sagacious mother seeks for her offspring; but soft and, as it were, milky insects, fat and succulent larvæ, fine little tender caterpillars,—all herbivorous, fructivorous, and leguminivorous animals; exactly those which do the greatest mischief in our fields and gardens.
Accordingly, the great labour of the bird against the insect precisely coincides with the labour of the husbandman.
For the rest, we are far from saying, as the author referred to makes us say, that the bird is the sole purifier of creation. One must be blind, and indeed senseless, not to see that he shares this mission with the insect. The action, too, of the latter is undoubtedly more efficacious in the pursuit of a world of living atoms, which the insect, whose eyes are microscopes, detects and pounces upon in numerous obscure corners, inaccessible to the bird. The bird, on the other hand, is the essential purifier of everything demanding long-sightedness and the power of flight,—as, for example, the frightful clouds of invisible animalcules which float and swim in the air, and therefore pass into our lungs.
As a rule, the equilibrium of species is desirable. All are more or less useful. We willingly join with the author of the paper referred to in the wish that those insects which prey upon the smaller species might be specially distinguished and spared. The peasant destroys them indiscriminately, without knowing that by killing, for instance, the dragon-fly (orlibellula)—the brilliant murderess which slays a thousand insects daily—he is helping the latter: becomes the auxiliary of the insects, the preserver and propagator of the enemies which devour his substance. The terrible cicindela does not fly so high, but with its crossed daggers, or rather the two scimitars which serve it for jaws, accomplishes a swift and almost incredible havoc among the smaller insects. Take care, then, and respect it. Do not listen to the child who is dazzled by the beauty of its wings, nor, to please him, impaleon the needle-point your admirable insect-hunter, the efficacious auxiliary of the agriculturist!
The carabi,—immense warrior-tribes armed to the very teeth, and displaying an ardent activity beneath their heavy coats of mail,—are the true guardians of your fields; and day and night, without holiday or repose, protect your crops. They themselves never touch the smallest blade or seed. Their sole occupation is to capture thieves, and they ask for no other reward than the thieves' bodies.
Others toil underground. The innocent lobworm, which pierces and stirs up the soil, gets ready in a marvellously excellent manner the muddy and clayey earths which are deficient in evaporation. Others, in company with the mole, hunt far down in the depths the cruel enemy of agriculture, the horribly voracious larva of the destructive cockchafer, which, for three years, has been preying on the roots beneath the surface.
The insectivorous insects put forth undeniable claims to the protection of man, whose allies they are. But even among the herbivora there are useful destroyers of harmful plants. The useless, pungent, and in every sense disagreeable nettle, which scarcely a single quadruped will deign to touch, fifty species of insects, in fellowship with ourselves, labour to destroy.
A very beautiful class of insects, some rich in outward garb, and others in intelligence, are theNecrophori, which render us the important service of clearing away all dead matter from the soil. Nature, which finds them souseful, has treated them truly as her favourites, honouring them with splendid costumes, and making them both industrious and ingenious in the discharge of their functions. It is a remarkable circumstance that, notwithstanding their sinister office, they are far from being wild, but are very sociable if the need arises, and understand how to unite their forces, combine their energies, and act in concert. In brief,—these honest undertakers and grave-diggers are the brilliant aristocracy of the insect nation.
It is evident that Nature's ideas are not the same as ours. She loads the most useful with rewards, whatever the nature of their work. For instance, theGeotrupes, which clears away the dung, is clothed in sapphire in payment of its service. The celebratedColeopteronof Egypt, the sacredAteuchusof the tombs,[J]appears glorified with an emerald aureola.
[J]TheAteuchus sacer, or Sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians.
[J]TheAteuchus sacer, or Sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians.
Who shall describe all the services rendered by these scavengers? Yet we are not just in our dealings with them. It happened to me, one April, when I was about to transplant to my garden some dahlias which had passed the winter in the orchard, to discover that the humidity of the air of Nantes, and the compact and imporous clayey soil, had rotted the tubers. A bevy of insects were at work upon them, and usefully engaged in purging this shocking centre of dissolution. The gardener was very indignant, and ready enough to accuse them of the evil which they were endeavouring to remedy.
The enemy of damp gardens, the snail (Helix), is pursued by an insect,[K]theDrylus, which lies in wait for it, and, the better to hunt it up, mounts on its back, and makes it carry him, seizes a favourable opportunity, and on the snail re-entering its shell, enters also, lives with it and upon it. A snail lasts him about a fortnight. Then he passes on to another and a larger, and then to a third still larger. He requires three in all. In the third, as he is about to change into a pupa, the drylus makes the place clean, and, to sleep conveniently, seizes on the substantial house of the enemy which has nourished him.
[K]The larva of theDrylus flavescens.
[K]The larva of theDrylus flavescens.
There could be no more useful task than to enlighten the peasant on the distinction that ought to be made between insects useful to agriculture and insects which are noxious; or those which may be turned to advantage in various sciences,—and especially in Chemistry,—which, it is probable, will yet discover unexpected resources in beings endowed with so copious and intense a vitality. In this respect, a very honourable work of initiation has been undertaken by the eminent naturalist who has so skilfully organized the museum at Rouen. All his pupils have preserved a grateful recollection of their teacher; and it is to one of them I owe the following summary of an original and instructive lecture on the Insect as Food.
"A prejudice much to be regretted, and a ridiculous fastidiousness, has debarred our Western peoples from one of the richest and most exquisite sources of nourishment. What right have they who devour tainted game, and unclean birds,—what right have the lovers of the oyster, that slimy mollusc, to reject the nourishment supplied by the Insect World?
"Burgundy has the good sense to profit, without any feeling of silly disgust, by the excellent mollusc which peoples its vineyards,—I mean the snail,—which is very good with butter and salads, and a dish as wholesome for the chest as it is agreeable to the mouth and profitable to the stomach.
"A celebratedsavant—Lalande—dared to take a step further in advance, and to venture upon the caterpillar, rising thus another step above our prejudices. It is to him we owe our knowledge of the fact that the caterpillar tastes like almonds, and the spider like hazel-nuts. He addicted himself to the latter, which he found more delicate."—I should think so. In every sense, the spider is a superior being.
"Many insects are so nutritious and savoury that they have been specially selected by ladies as a diet likely to renew their life, beauty, and youth. The Romans of the Later Empire recovered the ample outlines of the Cornelias of the Commonwealth by the use of theCossus.[L]The sultanas of the East, of those voluptuous lands where love seeksthe rounded, swelling figure, make their slaves bring them a supply ofBlaps,[M]and idling in their gardens, to the music of leaping fountains, imbibe from the succulent insect an eternal youthfulness.
[L]The Goat-Moth Caterpillar.
[L]The Goat-Moth Caterpillar.
[M]The women of Egypt, it is said, eat theBlaps sulcatacooked with butter.
[M]The women of Egypt, it is said, eat theBlaps sulcatacooked with butter.
"In Brazil, the Portuguese extracts from the Malalis of the bamboo, when the tree wears its nuptial flower, a kind of fresh butter for the table; and eats the ants in sweetmeats, at the moment that their wings uplift them on the breeze like an aspiration of love.
"But generally the insect, apart from its real value, has been hunted by the peasants whose tillage it destroyed. It plundered them of their food, and, in revenge, they themselves have fed uponit. The terrible locust, whose vast increase has so often imperilled the East, has been, on that very account, the more eagerly pursued and devoured by the Orientals. The story runs that the Caliph Omar, when seated at his family table, observing a locust alight there, read inscribed upon its wing:—'We hatch nine and ninety eggs; if we laid a hundred, we should devastate the world.'
"Fortunately the locust is the manna of Asia. Who does not know that the prophets, musing in the caves of Carmel, ate nothing else? The Mohammedan anchorites adopted the samerégime. One day a person said to Omar:—'What think you of locusts?' 'That I would fain have a basketful.' Soon afterwards the supply failed him. It was with difficulty his servant found a single insect; whereupon he, delighted and grateful, exclaimed, 'Allah is great!'
"Even at the present day locusts are sold throughout the East, and are eaten in the café as a dessert and a delicacy. Ships are loaded with them, and they are bought and sold by the cask.
"Here, then, we have insects exceptionally nutritious and substantial. What prevents us from making use of them? What scruple hinders us from active and useful reprisals against them?"
At this part of his discourse, the orator found his audience, consisting mainly of intelligent Norman peasants, wrapped in deep attention, as at those points of the debates of the British Parliament when the accustomed cry arises of "Hear! Hear!"
He had foreseen such a moment; and having loaded his table with some of the insects most dreaded by agriculturists, he seized them, crunched them, and swallowed them gravely, with this strong speech, which will not be without fruit:—"They have eaten us: let us eat them!"
V.—A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
V.—A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
CHAPTER V.A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves; are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language except for its own members.For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among them towards the close of their existence,—for one brief moment, it is true,—a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival of love.
CHAPTER V.
A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?
No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves; are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language except for its own members.
For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among them towards the close of their existence,—for one brief moment, it is true,—a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand festival of love.
They speak through the rare attractions with which they are invested,—through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,—throughthe fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of extraordinary toilets. They speak in their very lustre, and some species reveal their inner flame by a visible torch.
They lavish with royal magnificence their last days. And wherefore should they economize, when to-morrow they die? Break forth then, O life of splendour! Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sapphires and rubies! And let that incandescent ardour, that torrent of existence, that cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out in one common, rapid flood!
There is not space in our museums for the proper display of the prodigious, the unbounded variety of decoration with which Nature has, mother-like, sought to glorify the hymeneal of the insect and to emparadise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur having had the patience to show me in due succession genus after genus, species after species, the whole of his immense collection, I was astounded—in truth, I was stupefied—almost terrified by the inexhaustible energy—I was going to say fury—of invention which Nature displayed. I was overcome—I closed my eyes, and begged for a truce; my brain was dizzied and blinded, and became confused. But she, she would not let me go; she inundated and overwhelmed me with beautiful beings, with fantastic beings, with admirable monsters, with wings of fire, and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a hundred kinds of enamel, armed with singular apparatus—no lessbrilliant than formidable; some in embrowned steel, shot with yellow—others in silken hoods, embroidered with black velvet; these with fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich mahogany ground; those in pomegranate-coloured velvet lit up with gold; others in luminous, indescribable azures, relieved by jet-black beads; and others, again, bright in metallic streaks alternating with heavy velvet.
It was as if they wished to say:—
"We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina never wore. Do you wish for feathers? behold us radiant in plumage which the humming-bird cannot equal; or if you prefer leaves, we can imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood—in fact, all kinds of substances—there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand,—it is an insect!"
Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a people so redoubtable; with a burning brain I issued from the magic cave; and for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks danced and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my retina their wild, strange revel.
And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as in nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion,—especially in the burning climes where they abound and superabound,—where everything is in harmony with them,—where the air, the water, the flora, impregnated with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal hosts in the madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly renewed by impatient death?
The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable furnaces in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried on. The fantastic faëry of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with that of the animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries—not songs—form the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the woods and the savannahs, relieve each other,—hoarse and vibrating, but regular, as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert.Some by day, others by night; and perfectly distinct also at each of the three periods of the day,—morn, and noon, and evening. They disquiet the traveller, inasmuch as they reproduce our human voices or sounds, and seem ironical or mocking. One cries, another whistles, another sighs. This strikes like an alarm, that like a hammer, while a third imitates the tones of a bagpipe. The vast plains re-echo the mighty voice of the cariama. And that of the serpent-conqueror, the courageous kamichi, harsh and strong, echoing over the marshes, makes the savage tremble, for he thinks he hears the spirits passing.
At evening, with the song of the grasshoppers, the croaking of the frogs, the shriek of the owls, and the lamentations of the vampires, mingles the howl of the apes; until a hiss, which seems drawn from a wounded bosom, silences all, and spreads a universal terror, because it indicates the presence of the sharp-clawed prowler, the swift jaguar.
In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-choked sighs,—you place your foot upon them, and with terror discover that they are solid! that the surface is composed of great alligators, with their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic herbs! Let a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their heads and put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assemblage rise from the slime in all their horror! But is this all?—Even these monsters which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them. The piranha, or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs with its saw-like teeth the latter's tail, and carries it off before it can wheel round. The cayman, nearly always, mutilated in this manner, would perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it. The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as it passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have been wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the quadrupeds? The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is waged without pause in the deep waters,—in the waters living and overflowing with life, but with death also,—where is realized to the letter a rapid and furious suicide of Nature,—Nature devouring in order to re-create itself!
The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The exalted vitality, revealed among the gadflies and the mosquitoes, by their thirst of blood, is shown in other species by their enchanting colours, their caprices of design, their singularities of form, which either astonish us or terrify. TheBuprestis imperialis, proud of its green cuirass powdered all over with dust of gold, seems to have passed through the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and enriched itself on the way. TheBuprestis chrysochlorus, of a yellower green, flutters to and fro like a mounted gem. TheArlequinof Guiana,—a gigantic mower, armed with tremendous antennæ and prodigious legs to traverse the innumerable obstacles offered by the tall herbage,—is marked with black commas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable hieroglyphs,—a being doubly strange and doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for the sake of harmonizing colours not usually brought side by side, the artist traces a number of wavy and broken lines, which soften and blend them into complete accord.
Those gentle and social insects, the butterflies, covering the banks with their winged tribes, transform the whole prairie into an enchanting flowery carpet. The butterfly of butterflies, the glorious butterfly of Brazil, of a rich azure lit up by shifting gleams, softly hovers, in the warm hours, above the waters crowned by the imperial dome of the blossomy forests. A pacific and splendid creature, it seems the innocent king of all the puissant nature. Others, scarcelyless beautiful, follow in its train; and ever and ever more the glorious host, in floating azure, follows the current of the stream.
Such, then, are the tongues of Love; for the boundless rainbow of all these colours is simply its varied expression. And for what purpose, if love itself ought to appear without an intermediary?
Already, in our colder lands, the timid glow-worm, motionless under the hedgerow, suffers its little lamp to shine and guide through the night the lover to his love.
In Italy it moves to and fro, and its flame has acquired wings. I was much struck by it, at the hot springs of Acqui, in Piedmont, where sulphur everywhere prevails; the wild dance of the tiny lights seemed stimulated by the fires lurking in the entrails of the earth. In Brazil the very leaves overflow with phosphorus. How should aught be wanting for the illumination of the bridal-joy of the insect? That marvel, under the tropics, glitters everywhere and enchants everything. Two hundred species are known, which Nature has gifted with the poetic faculty of breathing forth flame, and charming their great festival with the poesy of light.
A graceful German lady, Mademoiselle Mérian, having been transplanted to these zones of fire, has related in naïve language the alarm which she experienced on seeing their insect wonders. The daughter and grand-daughter of excellent and laborious engravers, herself an artist and of well-informed mind, she has produced, in Latin, Dutch, and French, an admirable and picturesque work on the Insects of Surinam. The learned lady, in an exemplary life of misfortunes and virtues, had but one weakness (who has not one?)—the love of Nature. She quitted Germany for Holland, attracted by its unique and brilliant collections of the treasures of the two worlds. Then, as these did not suffice her, she visited Guiana, where she painted for several years. She combined in the same picture,—an excellent method,—the insect, the plant on which it lives, and the reptile which lives on the insect. Thoroughly conscientious, she sought out and posed her formidable models, of which, nevertheless, she was much afraid. Once, when the Indian savages had brought her a basket of insects, she was sleeping after her work. But in her chaste slumber she was disturbed by a strange dream. Shethought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew inflamed; it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room seemed filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true. The basket was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw that the volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (fulgores); their song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love.
In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows of the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects which he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted on the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and fixes them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep off serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and carefully replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their amorous work. There is a pretty Indian proverb: "Carry away the fire-fly, but return it to the place from which thou carriedst it."
Who can fail to be affected by their flame? It follows the movement of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow of our respiration; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart. It expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its emotion agitates also that tremendous torch.
What lies at the bottom? the visible desire, the effort to please and to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies with its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy cast, plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow, fading and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons, and storms of the violent loves of the South.
The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the American sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes upon it as her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim. Burning, she places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish.
There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph of audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoningthem in gauze, she wreathes the animated flames in glowing necklaces, and rolls them around her waist in girdles of fire. The queens of the ball are crowned with an infernal diadem of living topazes, of throbbing emeralds, which flicker or gleam (through suffering or love?). A brilliant but funereal decoration, of sinister magnetism, whose charm is enhanced by a sentiment of death. They dance; the waning flame associates its tender gleams with the languishing glances of a deep black eye. They dance; without end and without reason, without pity or remembrance of the amorous light dying and fading on their bosom, and having no power to say: "Replace me where you captured me!"