Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1920-01-29

period of nearly seventy years, are
now available to us in the works o1
the great French naturalist J. H. Fa-
bre, called the Poet of Science; the
ef-educated teacher, who mastered
several of the sciences in his youth
while he taught them. Keeping just
one lesson ahead of his pupils, the
whole range of the natural sciences
were perfectly familiar to him.
Fabre's great life work, however,
carried on through poverty, and un-
der distressing handicaps, that would
have discouraged any but the most ex-
alted genius, was the study of ento-
mology, and he writes to us of his "be-
loved insects" in language so marve-
lously beautiful, clear and easily un-
derstood, as to be perfectly fascinating
and quite impossible to describe.
He shows US that nearly all insects
prey on one another, each having its
| particular enemy, which reminds me
OF few lines [ read some where, the
author of which | have forgotten:
Great fieas have lesser feas.
Upon their backs to bite 'em;
The lesser beas, still lesser beas.
And so ad infinitum."
will briefly detail just one instance
for it would require a book merely to
| catalog the many observations and
experiments this ''inmutable observer"
as Darwin calls him, has handed on
to us.
THE Cerceris wasps, nourish them
selves only on the nectar of flowers:
but their larvae which they will never
behold, must have fresh and succulent
flesh still palpitating with life.
''The insect digs a tunnel in the soil,
IN which she places her eggs, and hav
ing provisioned the cell with selected
game-cricket, spider, caterpillar or
beetle-she finally closes the entrance.
which she never crosses again.
Like nearly all insects, the young
wasp is born in the larval state. and
from the moment Of it's Matching to the
endof its growth-that is a period of
many days-the grub in the cell can
look out for no outside help.
Here then, is a fascinating prob
lem; either the victims deposited by
the mother are dead, and putrefaction
attacks them at once, or else they are
living, as indeed the larvae require:
but then, what will become of the fra
glle creature, which a mere nothing
will destroy, shut in the narrow cham
Der of the burrow among the vigor-
Gus beetles, for weeks on end working
their long spurred legs, or at grips
with a monstrous caterpillar making
olay with it's flanks and mandibles.
rolling and unrolling its tortuous
folds?
Such is the thrilling mystery of
which Fabre discovered the key.
with inconceivable ingenuity, the
victim is seized and thrown to the
ground, and the wasp plunges her
sting, not at random into the body,
which would involve the risk of death.
but at determined points, exactly into
the seat of those invisible nervous
ganglions which govern the various
movements of the body of the creature.
Immediately after these subtle
wounds the prey is paralyzed thruout
its body; the true corpse is not more
motionless.
But the wound is not mortal; the
insect continues to live, the hungry
larvae finds its favorite meat and at
tacks the defenseless prey with an ex-
quisitely delicate art, nibbling the
viscera of its victim little by little,
with an infallible method; the essen
5ial parts first, and only in the last in
stance them which are necessary to
life; here then is the incomprehensi-
ole spectacle of an animal eaten alive,
mouthful by mouthful during periods
extending from two weeks to some
times month, is followed out, grows
less and less, and finally collapses, re-
tanning to the end it's succulence and
freshness"
And so the observations of this a.
mazing biologist, the one given here
being by no means one of the most
interesting, extend into the thousands,
and would fill easily an astonishing
five foot shelf
The object here is only to call your
attention to the Interpretation of ma
ture, carried out in detail by Fabre
the Homer of the Insects" whose
books in English translation are to
be found in our public libraries, and
which undoubtedly are neglected be-
cause so few have heard of them.