Part 24

In the province of Constantine the locust appeared almost simultaneously, from the Sahara to the sea, and from Bougia to La Calle. At Batna, at Setif, at Constantine, at Guelma, at Bona, at Philippeville, at Djidjelly, the inhabitants struggled with energy against this invasion, but neither fire nor any obstacles opposed to the advance of this winged army were able to stop their ravages. The French Government, to alleviate as much as possible the ruin which was thus brought upon the colony, opened a public subscription at the end of the year 1866.

The negroes of Soudan endeavour to frighten the locusts in their flight by savage yells. In Hungary they employed for the same object the noise of cannon. In the middle ages, for the want of cannon, they exorcised the locusts. A traveller of the sixteenth century, the monk Alvarez, relates that he also employed exorcisms against an immense host of these destructive insects which he met with in Ethiopia. When he perceived them, he made the Portuguese and the natives form in procession, and ordered them to chant psalms. "Thus chanting," says he, "we went into a country where the corn was, which having reached, I made them catch a good many of these locusts, to whom I delivered an adjuration, which I carried with me in writing, by me composed the preceding night, summoning, admonishing, and excommunicating them. Then I charged them in three hours' time to depart to the sea, or else to go to the land of the Moors, leaving the land of the Christians; on their refusal of which, I adjured and convoked all the birds of the air, animals, and tempests, to dissipate, destroy, and devour them; and for this admonition I had a certain quantity of these locusts seized, and pronouncing these words in their presence, that they might not be ignorant of them, I let them go, so that they might tell the rest." If one reflects that on their arrival in the land of the Moors, these same locusts were perhaps received by prayers which had for their object to send them back to the land of the Christians, they must have been very much embarrassed by such contradictory adjurations.

The Arabs have also an infallible means of ridding themselves of the locusts. Here is what General Daumas tells us on the subject According to Ben-Omar, the Prophet read one day, on the wings of a locust, written in Hebrew characters: "We are the troops of the Most High God; we each one lay ninety-nine eggs. If we were to lay a hundred we should devastate the whole world." Upon which Mahomet, greatly alarmed, made an ardent prayer, in which he begged God to destroy these enemies of Mussulmans. In answer to this invocation, the angel Gabriel told Mahomet that a part of his prayer should be granted. Since that epoch, indeed, words of invocation to the Prophet, written on a piece of paper, and enclosed in a reed, which is planted in the middle of a wheat-field or orchard, have the power of turning away the locusts.[80] This receipt is infallible, at least so say the devout Mussulmans.

[80] "Le Grand Désert," par le Général E. Daumas et E. de Chaucel. In 18mo. Paris, 1860.

There exists another quite as efficacious. They take four locusts, and write on the wings of each a verse of the Koran (four verses of the Koran are appropriated to this purpose). They then let the locusts thus marked fly into the midst of the swarm, and the flying army immediately take another direction.

By what the Arabs say, the locusts possess a number of virtues. When you see them in a dream, they announce the future; if you dream that you are eating them, it is a good omen; if you dream that it rains golden locusts, God will restore to you that which you have lost; &c. When Omar-ben-el-Khottal was Caliph, the locusts seemed to have completely disappeared. There was great sadness in the country in consequence. The Caliph especially was very much afflicted at it. He sent carriers into Yemen, into Cham, and into Irak, to see if they could not find a few. One of the _envoyés_ succeeded in his mission, and brought back a handful of locusts. "God is great!" cried Omar, who from that day had no more misgivings. In order to understand first the despair and then the satisfaction of the Caliph Omar, it is written, so say the Mussulmans, that the human race will disappear from the earth after the extinction of the locusts; that these insects were formed of the rest of the clay out of which man had been formed, and that they were destined to serve him as food.

And so locusts and fish are the only creatures which God allows the Mussulman to eat without being skinned. They must, however, have been killed by one of the faithful, for otherwise their flesh is impure! The Arabs eat, and are very fond of locusts. When he was asked his opinion on this article of food, the Caliph Omar-ben-el-Khottal said, "I only wish I had a basketful of them, wouldn't I scrunch them!"

According to General Daumas, locusts, fresh or preserved, are good food for both men and camels. They are eaten grilled or boiled, or prepared in the kous-koussou, after their legs, wings, and heads have been taken off. Sometimes they are dried in the sun, and reduced to powder, which is mixed with milk, and made into cakes with flour, dripping, or butter and salt. Camels are very fond of them; and they are given to them after having been dried, or roasted between two layers of ashes. Dried and salted, they are in Asia and in Africa an object of commerce. At Bagdad they sometimes cause the price of meat to fall. The taste of their flesh may be compared to that of the crab. Eastern nations have eaten locusts from time immemorial. The Greek comic poet, Aristophanes, tells us, in the "Acharnians," that the Greeks sold them in the markets. Moses allowed to the Jews four species, which are mentioned in Leviticus. St. John the Baptist, following the example of the prophet Amos, made them his food in the desert, where he found nothing but locusts and a little honey. The wholesomeness of this food was, however, disputed among the ancients. Strabo relates that there existed on the borders of the gulf of Arabia a people called by him _Acridophagi_, or Locust-eating people; but they all came to a miserable end. These people procured for themselves locusts by lighting great fires, when the equinoctial winds brought these hosts. Blinded and suffocated by the smoke, the locusts fell to the ground, and were picked up greedily by them, and eaten, fresh or salted. "These locust-eaters," says Strabo, "are, it is true, active, good runners; but their life never exceeds forty years. As they approach this age, a horrible vermin issues from their bodies, which eats them up, beginning from the belly, and so they die a miserable death." The same tale is to be met with in a description of Admiral Drake's voyage round the world. This traveller speaks of the natives of Ethiopia, who live on locusts, as dying eaten up by winged insects bred in their own bodies.

It is difficult to explain the origin of such fables. Travellers who have visited Arabia agree in declaring that the locust is a most wholesome article of food; that it is even fattening. At any rate, it is good food for cattle and poultry. The ancients employed locusts in medicine. Dioscorides asserts that the thighs of the locust, reduced to powder, and mixed with the blood of the he-goat, is a cure for leprosy; and mixed with wine, is a specific against the bite of the scorpion, &c.

It remains for us to describe some other species of grasshoppers less destructive in their ravages than the _Acridium migratorium_.

In the deserts of Egypt is to be met with the great _Eremobia_, and in South America the _Ommexeca_, which walks rather than springs. On the other hand, the _Tetrix_ springs very well. A remarkable feature about them is their thorax, which is prolonged into a point, and covers the whole body. They are small insects of gay and brilliant colours, and generally remain on the leaves of low plants, and escape easily from the hand that tries to catch them. The _Tetrix subulata_, of a brownish colour, is common during spring, in the environs of Paris, in the woods, and in dry and arid fields. The _Pneumoræ_ are very strange insects. The males have a very prominent abdomen, which resembles a bladder filled with air; and their wings are very much developed. The females have the abdomen of the ordinary shape; their wings are very short, or even quite rudimentary. The former produce a sharp stridulation, by rubbing their hind-legs against a row of small tubercles, which are to be seen on each side of the abdomen. The sound is rendered still more penetrating by the vesiculous or bladder-like abdomen, the skin of which is stretched as tight as a drum. The _Pneumoræ_ inhabit the South of Africa, as also do the _Truxales_, a few varieties of which, however, are to be met with in Spain, Sicily, and the South of France.

We will pass in silence over a great number of other less interesting species of Orthoptera. Those which we have described suffice to justify us in what we said above, namely, that this order contains insects of the strangest and most anomalous forms.

VI.

HYMENOPTERA.

The Order Hymenoptera comprises those insects which have four naked membranous wings, lying in repose horizontally upon the body, and intersected by a network of nerves. The name is derived from two Greek words--[Greek: hymên], a membrane, and [Greek: pteron], a wing. The mouth is composed of two horny mandibles, jaws, and lips adapted for suction.

It is amongst the Hymenoptera that we meet with the most industrious insects, some of which seem to possess real intelligence. These little animals offer the most admirable examples of sociability. Born architects, they construct dwellings marvellously contrived, which serve them, at the same time, as nurseries in which to rear their progeny, and storehouses in which to lay by their provisions. Nothing can equal the solicitude with which they watch over their young larvæ, still incapable of motion. They form republics, governed by immutable laws, and make war against their enemies in order of battle. They have predilections or antipathies for those who court their society, on account of the material advantages they derive from them.

The Bees, the Humble Bees, the Wasps, and the Ants, are the best-known types of this order of insects. Among a great number of the Hymenoptera the females are armed with a sting, or lancet, a wound from which causes great pain. All these insects undergo complete metamorphoses. In the larva state the aculeate species are incapable of motion and of obtaining food; but Nature has provided in different ways for their preservation. They are often lodged and fed by the workers of the tribe, unfruitful females, which, with a self-denial very rare in Nature, seem to have no other vocation than to sacrifice themselves to the welfare of the larvæ. The workers construct the nest and bring in the provisions. This is the case with honey bees, wasps, and ants.

Some deposit their eggs in the bodies of other insects, which die immediately the larvæ which live in them have attained their full development. The larvæ of the _Chalcididæ_ and of the _Ichneumonidæ_ furnish examples of Hymenoptera which inhabit the interior of the body of another insect. Other parasitical species carry on their depredations in a different way. They content themselves with laying their eggs in the nests of other species of the order, which have the advantage over them in being able to construct for themselves places of refuge. Their larvæ live thus on their neighbours' goods, nourishing themselves on the provisions which were laid up for others. In this way live the _Cleptes_, the _Chrysides_, &c. Lastly, others, such as the Gall-insects, and the _Tenthredinetæ_, or Saw-flies, live in their first state exposed on plants, and feed upon their leaves.

We shall only here describe the principal families of the Order Hymenoptera, which contains a considerable number of species. These families will be--1st. The _Apiariæ_, containing the Honey Bees, the _Melipodes_, and the Humble Bees. 2nd. The _Vespiariæ_, or Wasps. 3rd. The _Formicariæ_, or Ants. 4th. The _Gallicolæ_, or Gall-insects.

BEES.--Man, from the very earliest age, before any civilisation existed, knew the value of bees, and took advantage of the products of these industrious insects. The Bible makes mention of honey bees. Their Hebrew name is _Deborah_. The Greeks called them by the name of _Melissa_, or _Melitta_.

Their wonderful architectural powers, their economical forethought, the wonderful combination of their reasonings, which denote a real intelligence, their admirable social organisation, have in all times fixed the attention of naturalists, as they have also that of poets and thinkers. Virgil has celebrated them. In the fourth book of his Georgics, the Latin poet has summed up all that the ancients knew about bees. He paints with a good deal of truth many traits in their history, points out their enemies, and sets forth with accuracy all the care that should be taken of them. In the words of the Mantuan poet, they are heavenly gifts, _dona cælestia_, and their intelligence excited his admiration:--

"His quibus signis atque hæc exempla secuti, Esse apibus partem divinæ mentis, et haustus Æthereos dixere." ...

Let us hasten to say, however, that all which the ancients, naturalists or poets, Greek or Latin, relate on the subject of bees, is a mixture of truth and error, and rests generally on mere supposition. Aristotle knew well the three sorts of individuals which are comprised under the title of bees, and some other principal facts relating to their history; but these facts are not stated accurately and precisely in his account of them, and they are, above all, misinterpreted. The Greek philosopher understood insects in general very badly. He made them spring from the leaves of trees, and brought forward a multitude of errors about them, which the most simple observation would have sufficed to dissipate. Pliny tells us that Aristomachus of Soles consecrated fifty-eight years to the observation of the habits of the bee, and that Philiscus of Thrace passed, for the same motive, all his life in the forests. But this devotion to one object does not appear to have produced much result, if one compares the discoveries of our own age with the errors which Pliny, Aristotle, and Columella have chronicled respecting them. Pliny says that bees occupy the first rank among insects, and that they were created for man, for whom their work procures honey and wax. He adds that they form political associations, that they have councils, chiefs, and even a code of morality and principles.

One sees by this opinion of the Roman naturalist in what high esteem the ancients held bees. But they had the most singular ideas on the reproduction of these little beings; and as no one had ever seen their generation, they invented fable after fable to explain their origin. Some pretended that bees sprang from an ox recently killed, and buried in manure. Others added that they only sprang into existence from the chest of a young ox killed with violence. The most courageous bees came from the belly of a lion in a state of putrefaction. It was from the head of this same animal, in a state of corruption, that the _kings_ (_i.e._, the _queens_) were formed. The carcases of cows furnished the mild and tractable bees; a calf could only furnish small and weak ones. Other naturalists, or rather other dreamers, made these insects spring from the calices of sweet-scented flowers. Combined and separated in a certain manner, the flowers engendered bees. They said, further, that the bees sought on the blossoms of the olive trees and of the reed a seed which they rendered fit for the formation of their larvæ.

All these fables, which sprang from the imagination of the ancients, were developed by a writer of the Renaissance, a certain Alexander de Montfort, author of a work entitled "Printemps de l'Abeille." If we were to believe him, the king of the bees is formed of the juice which the workers extract from plants. These latter are created from honey; and the tyrants, _i.e._, the females, which do not manage to become sovereigns of a hive, are formed only of gum. It will be seen that he had profited only too well by what he had read in Greek and Roman authors.

The bee was very much thought of in ancient Egypt, and is often represented on their monuments, above the sculptured ornaments which contain proper names, with two semicircles and a sort of sheaf, or fasciculus. Champollion Figeac thinks that this group, taken together, represents a title added to a proper name. According to Hor-Apollon, another commentator on Egyptian hieroglyphics, the bee in the country of the Pharaohs was the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of its king. Nothing can be better than this comparison. It was for this reason, no doubt, that Napoleon I. sprinkled the symbolical bees over the imperial mantle which bears the arms of his dynasty.

All the fables, all the hypotheses, spread about and cherished by the ancients respecting these industrious little insects, were dissipated in a moment when, by the invention of glass bee-hives, first made in the beginning of the last century by Maraldi, a mathematician of Nice, we were enabled to observe their operations and habits. It is from this period only that our exact knowledge of the really wonderful life of these insects dates. Before Maraldi, the Dutch naturalist, Swammerdam, had written an excellent "History of Bees." He died before he had published his work, and when, a long while after his death, it was at length printed, other investigators had already pushed on their observations further than he had. Thanks to the invention of Maraldi, Réaumur, John Hunter, Schirach, and Francis Huber, had unveiled, by their admirable researches, the wonderful habits of these insects. The discoveries of Francis Huber seem to be almost miraculous, when we remember that this observer was blind from the age of seventeen.

Deprived of sight, Francis Huber did not the less wish to consecrate his life to the observation and the study of Nature. He caused the best works of his day on natural history and physics to be read to him, his usual reader being his servant, named Francis Burnens, a native of the Pays de Vaud. The honest Burnens took a singular interest in all he read, and showed by his judicious reflections the true talent of an observer, and Huber resolved to cultivate his talent. Very soon he could place implicit reliance in his companion, and see with another's eyes as if they were his own.

The two naturalists (we do not hesitate to give this title to the poor peasant of the canton of Vaud who so well seconded his master in his long hours of study) conceived a host of original experiments, which led them to discover truths which no one up to that time had dreamt of. The results of their researches were published, in 1789, in a volume which produced a profound sensation among naturalists.[81] Burnens was at a later period called back to the bosom of his family, and invested by his fellow-citizens with important functions. Francis Huber then continued his observations through the eyes of the excellent wife he had married. A second volume was thus composed by him twenty years after the appearance of the first. This volume was published by his son, Pierre Huber, to whom we are indebted for the admirable researches concerning ants, of which we shall have to speak further on.

[81] "Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles," par François Huber. Paris et Genève, in 8vo. 2e edition. 1814.

We will now speak of the habits of the bees. The labours of Réaumur, of Schirach, and of Huber, have perfectly revealed them to us, and have initiated us completely into the habits of these precious insects, which are for us to a certain extent domestic animals. We will begin by describing the Common Bee (_Apis mellifica_).

During the greater part of the year the population of our hives is composed exclusively of two sorts of individuals--the female, or mother bee, called also the queen bee; and the working bees, or neuters, which are, properly speaking, females incompletely developed. A third kind of individuals, the males, called also drones, are generally not met with except from May to July.

The working bees are the people, the crowd, the _servum pecus_, the living force, the bee community. They are recognised by their small size, reddish brown colour, and, above all, by the palettes and brushes with which the hind legs are furnished.

The three pairs of legs which are inserted in its thorax are its tools. The two hind-legs are longer than the other pairs, and present on the exterior a triangular depression, resembling a _palette_, which is surrounded by stiff hairs, forming, as it were, the borders of a sort of basket, in which the insect deposits the pollen of flowers. The broadest part of the leg articulates with the tarsus, which is of a square form, smooth on the exterior, and having hairs on its interior surface, which has caused it to be named the brush. The joint is used for gathering the pollen; it folds back on the leg (Fig. 310), and forms with it a sort of small pair of pincers; and, finally, the leg is terminated by four smaller articulations, the last of which is armed with hooks. The other tools of the working bee consist of a pair of movable mandibles, which close the mouth on its two sides, and of a trunk or proboscis (Fig. 311), which may be considered as a sort of tongue.

With its mandibles the working bee seizes any hard substance. The trunk serves it to collect the juice lying on the surface of the petals, or at the bottom of the corolla of the flower. When a bee has settled on a full-blown flower, it is seen immediately to make for the interior of the corolla, to put out its trunk, and apply it to the petals; it lengthens, shortens, and twists and bends it in all directions. When the hairy surface of this organ is covered with vegetable juice, the bee returns it to its mouth, and deposits the booty in a conduit, whence the juice passes into the first stomach. This trunk is then, in all respects, a tongue, with which the bee sucks, licks, and pumps up the honey of flowers. But it also gathers the pollen. When it enters a flower the bee covers itself with pollen from head to foot, and then passing its brushes carefully over its whole body, removes the dust which adheres to it in every part, and piles it up on the triangular palettes of its hind-legs, in such a manner as to form balls of greater or less size. If the flower is not quite full blown, the bee makes use of its mandibles to open the anthers, in which case the front pair of legs transmit the booty to the second pair, which stores them in the baskets of the third. When it has gathered as much as it can carry, the bee returns to the hive, its legs laden with pollen.

This complete set of tools which we have just described is only to be met with among the working bees. The males, or drones (Fig. 312), larger and more hairy than the working bees, emitting a sonorous and buzzing sound, have no palettes on their legs, the hairs on their tarsi are not appropriated to the work of gathering, their mandibles are shorter, and they have no _aculeus_, or sting, which is the working bee's weapon.