THE BEADED TROX

The Fly has deserved well of hygiene. The first to come to the dead Mole, she left behind her a garrison of scavengers which, without dissecting-instruments, whether lancets or scalpels, set to work upon the corpse. The most urgent matter was to sterilize the carcase, to extract from it such substances as are readily corrupted, the source of rapid and dangerous putrescence. And this is what the maggot has been doing. From its pointed mouth, for ever poking and rummaging, it dribbled forth a solvent as effective as any in my laboratory; with this reagent it dissolved the flesh and viscera, or at least reduced them to a thick liquid broth. Gradually the soil is saturated with the fertilizing moisture, which the plant will soon restore to the laboratory of living chemistry.

When her mission is completed, the Fly herself becomes a danger, because of her excessive numbers. In order to perform their pressing task more quickly, the maggots operate in legions. If not checked, they would encumber the world. The balance of things in general demands their disappearance. Then, in due season, the exterminator arrives, the Saprinus doting on fat sausages, the slow-trotting Beetle in black armour who massacres the vermin and leaves only enough survivors to maintain the race.

The Mole is now a dried-up mummy, but is harmful if affected by moisture. This remnant also has to disappear. The Dermestes is entrusted with the task. She establishes herself beneath the remains in company with the Silpha, her collaborator. With her patient tooth she files, rasps and disarticulates as long as a scrap of cartilage is left to gnaw. She is greatly assisted by her starveling larvæ, who are lither in the back and therefore able to slip into narrow crevices.

By the time the Dermestes has finished, my pans contain so many heaps of bones, a conglomeration of Snakes’ vertebræ arranged in a row, Moles’ jaws, with their fine, insectivorous teeth, Frogs’ toe-and-finger-joints, radiating like knotty sticks, Rabbits’ skulls overlapping their powerful incisors, all white and clean enough to arouse the envy of the people who prepare our anatomical specimens.

Yes, working one on the soft parts and then the other on the hard, the maggot and the Dermestes have performed a meritorious task. There is no longer any pestilential filth, any dangerous effluvia. The residue, mostly of a chalky nature, if it still offends the eye, is at least capable of vitiating the air, the first aliment of life. General hygiene is satisfied.

Besides his bones, the Mole has left the tatters of his fur; the Snake has been flayed in tatters like the skin which boiling water strips from a fleshy root. The Fly’s solvent was powerless to affect these refractory substances; the Dermestes refused them. Will these epidermic shreds remain unutilized? Certainly not. Nature, the sublime economist, takes good care that all things return to the treasury of her works. Not an atom must be allowed to go astray.

Others will come, frugal and patient pickers-up of unconsidered trifles, and will garner the Mole’s fur, hair by hair, to cover themselves, to clothe themselves with it; there will be some, we may be sure, that will feast upon the Snake’s cast scales. These are the Tineæ, the humble caterpillars of no less humble Moths.

Everything suits them in the way of animal clothing: bristles, hair, scales, horn, fur, feather; but for their labours they need darkness and repose. In the sunshine and bustle of the open air they refuse the relics in my pans; they wait until a gust of wind sweeps the charnel-pits and carries the Mole’s velvety down or the reptile’s parchment into a shady corner. Then, infallibly, the cast-off garments of the dead will disappear. As for the bones, the atmospheric agencies, having plenty of time, will crumble and disintegrate them in good time.

If I wish to hasten the end of the epidermic remains disdained by the Dermestes, I have only to keep them in a dry place, in the dark. Before long the Moth will come to exploit them. They infest my house. I had received the skin of a Rattlesnake from Guiana. The horrible specimen, rolled into a bundle, reached me intact, with its poison-fangs, the mere sight of which makes one shudder, and its alarm of rattling rings. In the Carib country it had been steeped in a poison which should have ensured its preservation for an indefinite length of time. A useless precaution: the Moths have invaded the thing; they are gnawing at the Rattlesnake’s skin and find the unusual dish, here eaten for the first time, excellent. More familiar victuals, such as the skin of our native Snake, tanned by the maggots and the sun, would be exploited with even greater enthusiasm.

And any relics of what has once lived are visited by specialists who come hurrying up to work upon dead matter and restore it to circulation under new forms. Among them are some whose peculiar specialty shows us with what scrupulous economy the waste material of life is utilized. Such is the Beaded Trox (T. perlatus, Scriba), a humble Beetle, no larger than a cherry-stone at most, black all over and decorated on the wing-cases with rows of protuberances which have earned it the epithet of beaded.

Not to know the Trox is quite excusable, for the insect has never been much talked about. It is an obscure creature, overlooked by the historian. When impaled in a collector’s box, it ranks close to the Dung-Beetles, just after the Geotrupes.1 Its mean and earthy attire denotes a digger. But what precisely is its calling? Like many others, I did not know, when an accidental discovery enlightened me and taught me that the beaded insect deserves something better than a mere compartment in the collector’s necropolis.

February was drawing to a close. The weather was mild and the sun warm. We had gone off in a family party, with the children’s lunch, an apple and a chunk of bread, in the basket, to see the almond trees in bloom. When lunch-time came, we were resting under some great oaks, when Anna, the youngest of the household, always on the watch for “beasties” with her six-year-old eyes, called to me from a distance of a few yards:

“A beastie!” she cried. “Two, three, four of them! And such pretty ones! Come and look, papa, come and look!”

I ran up to her. The child had dug into the sand, to no great depth, with a bit of stick, and was breaking up a sort of rag of fur. I produced my pocket trowel and joined her in the task; and in a moment I possessed a dozen Trox-beetles, most of whom I found in a filthy tangle of fur and broken bones. They were working away at it and apparently feeding on it. I had disturbed them at their banquet.

What could this mess be? That was the fundamental question to be solved. Brillat-Savarin2 declared as an axiom:

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”

If I wish to know the Trox, I must first enquire what she eats. Reader, pity the sorrows of the naturalist! Behold me scrutinizing, meditating, conjecturing, my mind set in a whirl by an unspeakable problem, a stercoral problem.

Whom am I to hold responsible for this fibrous lump, in which I seem to distinguish Rabbit’s fur as the chief ingredient? The probabilities point to the dog. Rabbits abound on the Sérignan hills; they even enjoy a certain reputation among our epicures. The village sportsmen hunt them assiduously; and their Dogs, those poachers heedless of licences and of the police, do not fail to harry them on their own account, at all seasons, close or open.

Two of them are known to me by report: Mirate and Flambard. They meet by appointment of a morning in the market-place, exchange an inquisitive glance, inspect each other with the three regulation turns, lift a leg against the wall … and off they go! For the best part of the morning you can hear them on the neighbouring hill-sides, giving vent to short, sharp yelps, close on the heels of a Rabbit who scampers from thicket to thicket, with his little white scut in the air. At last they return home: the result of the expedition may be read on their bloody chaps: the Rabbit was eaten on the spot, just as it was, skin and all.

Does this really explain the substance on which my Trox-beetles were living? It seems to me that it does. Henceforth it would appear an easy matter to rear them. I install the insects in a large earthenware pan with a bed of sand and a wire-gauze cover. The provisions consist of Dog-droppings, dried on the road-mender’s stone-heaps beside the highway. My menagerie absolutely refuse to look at them. I have made a mistake. Then what does it want?

It is under hairy ordure that I find the insect, always there and never any elsewhere. Rarely does a lump of this rough felt fail to conceal a few of them. Under their tight-fitting wing-cases, they have only quite rudimentary wings, unsuited to flight. These short-legged creatures hasten to the titbit and gather about it on foot. They come from afar, from all points of the compass, guided by the scent. Once more, what is the origin of this felt, which has a strong enough stench in the fresh state to attract its consumers from such a distance?

At last I have my answer. Investigations patiently pursued on the slopes of the hills, above all near the farms, furnish me with a decisive piece of evidence. This is a mass of filth, full of fur and Trox-beetles, like the others, but this time a regular nugget, all glittering with wing-cases of the Golden Carabus.3 Eureka! Never did Dog, even though starving, feed on Beetles, least of all on acrid Carabi. Only the Fox, in time of dearth, accepts such food, in the absence of anything better. Later on he makes up for it with Rabbits, slaughtering them by night, when his rivals, Mirate and Flambard, are resting from their labours.

The fur from which the Fox’s stomach can derive no benefit has its votaries. In the natural state, as it grows on the skins which provide the hat-maker with felt, it suits the Moth; unsuccessfully worked by the carnivore’s intestine and seasoned with fæcal matter, it delights the Beaded Trox. There are all sorts of tastes in this world, so that nothing may be lost. The menagerie under the wire-gauze dome, when supplied with the requisite diet of Rabbit’s fur pickled by an attempt at digestion, fares very well.

Moreover, the food is collected without difficulty. The Fox is only too common in my neighbourhood. I can easily find his furry excreta on the tangled paths which he frequents at night when going his round of the farms. My Trox-beetles have plenty to eat.

Not endowed with a nomadic temperament and abundantly provided for, they seem very well satisfied with the arrangements made on their behalf. By day, they remain on the heap of victuals; feeding at leisure, without moving. If I approach the wire-gauze cover, they instantly drop down; then, recovering from their excitement, they hide under the heap. There is nothing striking in the habits of these pacific creatures, unless it be the pairing, which drags on for two months, frequently broken off, frequently resumed, often a passing fancy. It is never finished.

At the end of April I proceed to search under the heap of provisions. The eggs are distributed very near the surface in the moist sand, singly, without cells or any preparation by the mother. They are white and globular, about the size of small birdshot. I find that they are very bulky in comparison with the size of the insect. Their number is not great. Ten at most is the allowance for one mother, as far as I can judge.

The larvæ soon appear and develop rather quickly. They are naked, cylindrical grubs, dull white, curved into a hook like the Dung-beetles’, but without the knapsack in which the latter reserve the cement for plastering the interior of the emptied loaf and preserving the victuals from desiccation. The head is powerful and glossy black; there is a brown streak on either side of the first thoracic segment; the legs and mandibles are strongly made.

Classed close beside the Dung-eaters, the Trox-beetles form a genus of boorish habits, far removed from the domestic fondness of the Scarabæus, the Copris4 and the others. With them there are no longer provisions stored away beforehand, no rations kneaded for the larva’s benefit. The least industrious of the Dung-beetles, the Onthophagi,5 for example, pack into the bottom of a pit a short sausage, selected from the best part of the exploited heap; in the dish thus provided they contrive a hatching-chamber, in which the egg is daintily lodged. Thanks to the mother’s care, often, also, to the father’s, the new-born grub finds itself provided with all it could wish. It is a privileged creature, spared the asperities of life.

The Trox, on the other hand, has a harsh and pitiless training. The grub has to find board and lodging at its own cost and peril, a serious question even for a consumer of Fox-dung. The mother scatters her eggs under the furry ordure. Her foresight in the interest of her young goes no further. The cake that nourishes her will feed her family likewise. It is large and will be enough for all.

In order to follow the first actions of the grubs, I set apart a few eggs, singly, in a glass tube. At the bottom is a column of moist sand; above this is a store of food taken from that part of the Vulpine excrement which is richest in Rabbit’s fur. Hatched by day, the grub at first attends to its lodging. It digs, hollowing itself a retreat in the sand, a short, vertical shaft into which a few scraps of the fostering felt are dragged afterwards. As and when the provisions are consumed, the grub returns to the surface to collect more.

The manœuvres of the grubs in the chief establishment, the earthenware pan with the wire-gauze cover, begin and are continued in the same fashion. Under cover of the heap exploited in common, the larvæ have dug themselves a vertical shaft apiece, the length of a man’s finger and the diameter of a thick pencil. At the bottom of the dwelling there is no mass of victuals stored up in advance, such as the abundance on the surface would permit. Instead of hoarding, the Trox-larvæ live from day to day, I surprise them, above all in the evening, discreetly climbing to the top, scraping the heap above their pit, collecting a shaggy armful and immediately climbing down again tail foremost. They do not reappear so long as the little bale of fur holds out. When their provisions are finished and their appetite returns, they make a fresh ascent and a fresh collection.

This frequent coming and going in the shaft threatens sooner or later to bring down the sandy wall. Here we see renewed the industry of the Geotrupes couples, who have a way of plastering the wall of their pit with dung in order to avoid its collapsing while the material of the huge sausage is being amassed on repeated journeys; only, with the Trox, it is the larva itself that undertakes the work of consolidation. From end to end it lines its gallery with the same felt on which it feeds.

In three or four weeks’ time, all the hairy materials of the heap have disappeared underground, dragged by the larvæ to the bottom of their burrows. On the surface of the soil nothing is left except the remains of the bones. The adults have gone to earth and are dead or dying. Their time is over. I obtain the first nymphs at midsummer. A glass receptacle shows them to me slowly turning round and round and polishing with their backs the earthy wall of their cell, a simple, oval cavity.

By the middle of July the perfect insect has matured. Not yet defiled by the dirt of its calling, it is really magnificent in its ebony cuirass, its strings of large beads surmounted by white hairs, its hinder and middle tarsi shod with bright red. It comes up to the surface, finds the Fox’s dejecta, settles down and from now onward is a filthy scavenger. Once torpid in the sand, under the heap of ordure which serves it as a roof, it will pass the winter there and resume its labours in the spring.

When all is said, the Trox is a somewhat uninteresting insect. One single point in her history deserves to be remembered, namely, her predilection for what the Fox’s stomach has refused. I know another instance of these peculiar tastes. The Owl, when he has caught a Field-mouse, stuns her with a blow of his beak on the back of the neck and swallows her whole. It is for the digestive pouch to bone and skin her and sift the bad from the good. When the selection is made—as it is, most admirably—the bird, with a shrug of its body, gets rid of the indigestible stuff; it vomits a pellet of bones and fur. Now, just like the furry mass evacuated by the Fox, these balls of filth have their votaries. I have just seen one of them at work. This is the Choleva tristis, Panz., a dwarf related to the family of the Silphæ.

Is the fur of a Rabbit or a Field-mouse such a very precious thing, then, that it has special exploiters appointed to work at it again after the Fox’s intestine and the Owl’s crop have been unable to break it up and use it? Yes, this fur has a certain value. Nature’s treasury claims it for fresh purposes with such an imperious voice that our own industries, which in their fashion are endowed with a terrific power, of digestion, cannot guarantee us the protracted possession of what was a scrap of fluff.

Cloth comes from the Sheep. It has been worked up by the teeth of machinery at the spinner’s and the weaver’s; it has been steeped in chemicals at the dyer’s; it has passed through worse ordeals than an attempt to digest it. Is it now safe from attack? No: the Moth vie with us for its possession.

Poor swallow-tail coat of mine, of supple broadcloth, companion of my drudgery6 and witness of my poverty, I abandon you without regret for the peasant’s jacket; you are reposing in a drawer, with a few bags of camphorated lavender; the housewife keeps an eye on you and shakes you from time to time. Useless pains! You will perish by the Clothes-moths, as the Mole perished by the maggot, the Snake by the Dermestes and we ourselves by.… Let us not dig that last pit of all before the hour has struck. Everything must return to the renovating crucible into which death is continually pouring materials to ensure the continual blossoming of life.