THE SACRED BEETLE: THE MODELLING

Here we are on solid ground, in the domain of facts, of things that can be seen and recorded. How does the Sacred Beetle obtain the maternal pear? To begin with, it is certain that this shape is not achieved by the process of transport, for it is not at all what one would get from haphazard rolling in all directions. The belly of the gourd might be made in that way; but the neck, the elliptical nipple hollowed into a hatching-chamber: that delicate work could never result from a series of violent, irregular bumps. A goldsmith does not hammer out a jewel on a blacksmith’s anvil! Together with other sound reasons already adduced, the pear-shaped outline delivers us, I hope, once and for all, from the antiquated belief that the egg has its home inside a roughly-jolted sphere.

To produce his masterpiece, the sculptor retires to his den. Even so the Sacred Beetle. She shuts herself in her crypt, with the materials which she has brought down there, in order to concentrate upon her modelling. The block out of which she is to shape her pear may be obtained in two ways. Sometimes the Beetle manages to secure from the heap, by the method familiar to us, a fine mass of material which is kneaded into a ball on the [74]spot and which is a perfect sphere before it is set in motion. Were it only a question of provisions intended for her own meal, she would never act otherwise.

When the ball is deemed big enough, if the place does not suit her wherein to dig the burrow, she sets out with her rolling burden, going at random till she lights upon a favourable spot. On the way, the ball, without becoming any rounder than it was to start with, hardens a little on the surface and is encrusted with earth and tiny grains of sand. This earthy rind, picked up on the road, is an authentic sign of a more or less long journey. The detail is not without importance; we shall find it useful presently.

At other times, the Beetle may hit upon a suitable site for her burrow close to the heap which has provided her block. The soil may be free from pebbles and easy to dig. In that case there is no need of any travelling, and consequently no need to make a ball. The soft droppings of the Sheep are gathered and stored as found, entering the workshop as a shapeless mass, either in one lump or, if need be, in several.

This rarely happens under natural conditions, because of the roughness of the ground, which is full of stones and flints. Sites practicable for easy digging are few and far between; and the insect has to roam about, with its burden, to find them. In my cages, on the other hand, where the layer of earth has been passed through a sieve, it is the usual case. Here the soil is easy to dig at any point; and so the mother, who is anxious to get her eggs laid, merely lowers the nearest lump underground, without waiting to give it any definite form.

Whether this storing without any preliminary modelling or carting take place in the fields or in my cages, the ultimate [75]result is most striking. One day, I see a shapeless lump disappear into the crypt. Next day, or the day after, I visit the workshop and find the artist in front of her work. The original formless mass, the armfuls of scrapings carried down, have become a pear perfect in outline and exquisitely finished.

The artistic object bears the marks of its method of manufacture. The part that rests upon the bottom of the cavity is crusted over with earthy particles; all the rest is of a glossy polish. Owing to its weight, owing also to the pressure exercised when the Beetle manipulated it, the pear, while still quite soft, became soiled with grains of earth on the side that touched the floor of the workshop; on the remainder, which is the larger part, it has retained the delicate finish which the insect was able to give it.

The inferences to be drawn from these carefully noted details are obvious: the pear is no turner’s work; it has not been obtained by any sort of rolling on the ground of the spacious studio, for in that case it would have been soiled with earth all over. Besides, its projecting neck eliminates this method of fabrication. And its unblemished upper surface is eloquent testimony that it has not even been turned from one side to the other. The Beetle, therefore, has moulded it where it lies, without turning or shifting it at all; she has modelled it with little taps of her broad paddles, just as we saw her model her ball in the daylight.

Let us now return to what usually happens in the free state. The materials then come from a distance and are carried into the burrow in the form of a ball covered with soil on every part of its surface. What will the insect do with this sphere which contains the paunch of the future [76]pear ready-made? It would be easy to answer this if I concerned myself only with results, without troubling how those results were obtained. It would be enough for me, as I have often done, to capture the mother in her burrow with her ball and take the whole lot home, to my insect laboratory, in order to keep a close watch on events.

I fill a large glass jar with earth, sifted, moistened and heaped to the desired depth. I place the mother and the beloved pill which she is clasping on the surface of this artificial soil. I stow away the apparatus in a dim corner and wait. My patience is not tried very long. Urged by the insistent ovaries, the Beetle resumes her interrupted work.

In certain cases, I see her, still on the surface, destroying her ball, ripping it up, cutting it to pieces, shredding it. This is not in the least the act of one in despair who, finding herself a captive, breaks the precious object in her madness. It is based on sound hygienics. A scrupulous inspection of the morsel which she has gathered in haste, among lawless competitors, is often necessary, for supervision is not always easy on the harvest-field itself, in the midst of thieves and robbers. The ball may be harbouring a collection of little Onthophagi and Aphodii who passed unnoticed in the heat of acquisition.

These involuntary intruders, finding themselves very well-off in the heart of the mass, would make good use of the future pear, much to the detriment of the legitimate consumer. The ball must be purged of this hungry brood. The mother, therefore, pulls it to pieces and scrutinizes the fragments closely. Then the sorted bits are carefully put together again and the ball remade, this time without any earthy rind. It is dragged underground and becomes [77]an immaculate pear, always excepting the surface touching the soil.

Oftener still, the ball is thrust by the mother into the soil in the jar just as I took it from the burrow, still with the rough crust which it has acquired in its cross-country rolling from the place where it was obtained to the place where the insect intends to use it. In that event, I find it at the bottom of my jar transformed into a pear, but still rough and encrusted with earth and sand over the whole of its surface, thus proving that the pear-shaped outline has not demanded a general recasting of the mass, inside as well as out, but has been obtained by simple pressure and by drawing out the neck.

This is how, in the vast majority of cases, things happen under normal conditions. Almost all the pears that I dig up in the fields have rinds and are unpolished, some more, others less. If we put on one side the inevitable incrustations due to the carting-process, these blemishes would seem to point to a prolonged rolling in the interior of the subterranean manor. The few which I find perfectly smooth, especially those wonderfully neat specimens furnished by my cages, dispel this mistake entirely. They show us that, when the materials are collected near the burrow and stored away unshaped, the pear is modelled wholly without rolling; they prove to us that, in other cases, the lines of earth and grit on the outside of the ball are not a sign of its having been rolled to and fro in the workshop, but are simply the marks of a fairly long journey on the surface of the ground.

To be present at the construction of the pear is no easy matter: the mystery-loving artist obstinately refuses to do any work as soon as the light reaches her. She needs absolute darkness for her modelling; and I need light if [78]I would see her at her task. It is impossible to unite the two conditions. Let us try, nevertheless; let us catch some glimpses of the truth whose fulness eludes our vision.

The arrangements made are as follows: I once more take the big jar. I cover the bottom with a layer of earth two or three inches deep. To obtain the transparent workshop necessary for my observations, I fix a tripod on the earthy layer and, on this support, about four inches in height, I place a round piece of deal of the same diameter as the jar. The glass-walled chamber thus marked out will represent the roomy crypt in which the insect works. A piece is scolloped out of the edge of the deal block, large enough to permit of the passage of the Beetle and her ball. Lastly, above this screen, I heap a layer of earth as deep as the jar allows.

During the operation, a portion of the upper earth falls through the opening and slips down to the lower space in a wide inclined plane. This was a circumstance which I had foreseen and which was indispensable to my plan. By means of this slope, the artist, when she has found the communicating trap-door, will make for the transparent cell which I have arranged for her. She will make for it, of course, only provided that she be in perfect darkness. I therefore make a cardboard cylinder, closed at the top, and place it over the glass jar. Left standing where it is, the opaque sheath will provide the dusk which the insect wants; suddenly raised, it will give the light which I want.

Things being thus arranged, I go in quest of a mother who has just withdrawn into solitude with her ball. A morning’s search is enough to provide me with what I need. I place the mother and her ball on the surface of the upper layer of earth; I cap the apparatus with its [79]cardboard sheath; and I wait. I say to myself that the Beetle is too persevering to give up work until her egg is housed and that she will therefore dig herself a new burrow, dragging her ball with her as she goes; she will pass through the upper layer of earth, which is not sufficiently thick; she will come upon the deal board, an obstacle similar to the broken stones that often bar her passage in the course of her normal excavations; she will investigate the cause of the impediment and, finding the opening, will descend through this trap-door to the lower compartment, which, being free and roomy, will represent to the insect the crypt whence I have just removed it. But all this takes time; and I must wait for the morrow to satisfy my impatient curiosity.

The hour has come: let us go and see. The study-door was left open yesterday: the mere sound of the door-handle might disturb and stop my distrustful worker. By way of greater precaution, before entering I put on noiseless slippers. And now, whoosh! The cylinder is removed. Capital! My forecast was correct.

The Beetle occupies the glazed studio. I surprise her at work, with her broad foot laid on the rough model of the pear. But, startled by the sudden light, she remains motionless, as though petrified. This lasts a few seconds. Then she turns her back upon me and awkwardly ascends the inclined plane, to reach the dim heights of her gallery. I give a glance at the work, take note of its shape and its position, and once more restore darkness with the cardboard sheath. Let us not prolong our intrusion, if we would renew the test.

My sudden, short visit gives us some idea of the mysterious work. The ball, which at first was absolutely spherical, is now depressed at the top into a sort of shallow [80]crater with a swollen rim. The thing reminds me, on a very much smaller scale, of certain prehistoric pots, with a round belly, a thick-lipped mouth and a narrow groove round the neck. This rough model of the future pear tells us of the insect’s method, a method identical with that of pleistocene man ignorant of the potter’s wheel.

The plastic ball, ringed at one end, has had a groove made in it, the starting-point of the neck of the pear; it has also been drawn out slightly into a rather blunt projection. In the centre of this projection pressure has been applied. The first stage of the work therefore consists merely in placing a ring round the ball and applying pressure.

Towards evening I pay another sudden visit, in complete silence. The insect has recovered from its excitement of the morning and gone down again to its workshop. Troubled by the flood of light, baffled by the strange events to which my artifices give rise, it at once makes off and takes refuge in the upper story. The poor mother, persecuted by these illuminations, moves away into the darkest recesses; but she goes regretfully, with hesitating steps.

The work has progressed. The crater has become deeper; its thick lips have disappeared, are thinner, closer together, drawn out into the neck of a pear. The object, however, has not changed its place. Its position and direction are exactly as I noted them before. The side that rested on the ground is still at the bottom, at the same point; the side that faced upwards is still at the top; the crater that lay on my right has been replaced by the neck, still on my right. All of which gives conclusive proof of my earlier statements: there is no rolling, but only pressure, which kneads and shapes.[81]

The next day, a third visit. The pear is finished. Its neck, yesterday a yawning sack, is now closed. The egg, therefore, is laid; the work is completed and demands only the finishing touches of general polishing, touches upon which the mother, so intent on geometrical perfection, was doubtless engaged at the time when I disturbed her.

The most delicate part of the business escapes my observation. Roughly speaking, I can see plainly how the egg’s hatching-chamber is obtained: the thick pad surrounding the original crater is thinned and flattened under the pressure of the feet and is lengthened into a sack the mouth of which gradually narrows. Up to this point the work provides its own explanation. But, when we think of the insect’s rigid tools, its broad, toothed fore-arms, whose spasmodic movements remind us of the stiff gestures of an automaton, we are left without any explanation of the exquisite perfection of the cell which is to be the hatching-chamber of the egg.

With this crude equipment, excellently adapted to pickaxe-work though it be, how does the Scarab obtain the natal dwelling, the oval nest so daintily polished and glazed within? Does her foot, a regular saw, fitted with enormous teeth, begin to rival the artist’s brush in delicacy from the moment when it is inserted through the narrow orifice of the sack? Why not? I have said elsewhere, and this is the moment to say it again: the tool does not make the workman. The insect exercises its own particular talents with any kind of tool with which it is supplied. It can saw with a plane or plane with a saw, like the model workman of whom Franklin tells us. The same strong-toothed rake which the Sacred Beetle uses to open up the earth she also employs as a trowel and brush [82]wherewith to glaze the stucco of the chamber in which the grub will be born.

In conclusion, one more detail concerning this hatching-chamber. At the extreme end of the neck of the pear, one point is always pretty clearly distinguished: it bristles with stringy fibres, while the rest of the neck is carefully polished. This is the plug with which the mother has closed the narrow opening after carefully depositing the egg; and this plug, as its hairy structure shows, has not been subjected to the pressure exerted over all the rest of the mass, working into it any projecting bits, however small, till not the slightest sign of roughness remains.

Why does the extreme end of the pear receive this special treatment, a most curious exception, when nothing else has eluded the heavy blows of the insect’s legs? The reason is that the hind-end of the egg rests against this plug, which, were it pressed down and driven in, would transmit the pressure to the germ and imperil its safety. So the mother, aware of the risk, stops the hole without ramming down the stopper: the air in the hatching-chamber is thus more easily renewed; and the egg escapes the dangerous activity of the powerful rammer.[83]