Entomologists -- France -- Biography; Fabre, Jean-Henri, 1823-1915
A wild bee, the Chalicodoma, and a wasp, the Cerceris, carried in the dark
far from their familiar pastures, to a distance of several miles, and
released in spots which they have never seen, cross vast and unknown spaces
with absolute certainty, and regain their nests; even after long absence,
and in spite of contrary winds and the most unexpected obstacles. It is not
memory that guides them, but a special faculty whose astonishing results we
must admit without attempting to explain them, so far removed are they from
our own psychology. (7/6.) But here is another example:
The Greater Peacock moths cross hills and valleys in the darkness, with a
heavy flight of wings spotted with inexplicable hieroglyphics. They hasten
from the remotest depths of the horizon to find their "sleeping beauties,"
drawn thereto by unknown odours, inappreciable by our senses, yet so
penetrating that the branch of almond on which the female has perched, and
which she has impregnated with her effluvium, exerts the same extraordinary
attraction. (7/7.)
Considering these creatures, we end by discovering more things than are
contained in all the philosophies...if we know how to look for them.
Among so many unimaginable phenomena, which bewilder us, "because there is
nothing analogous in us," we succeed in perceiving, here and there, a few
glimpses of day, which suddenly throw a singular light upon this black
labyrinth, in which the least secret we can surprise "enters perhaps more
directly into the profound enigma of our ends and our origins than the
secret of the most urgent and most closely studied of our passions." (7/8.)
Fabre explains by hypnosis one of those curious facts which have hitherto
been so poorly interpreted. When surprised by abnormal conditions, we see
insects suddenly fall over, drop to the ground, and lie as though struck by
lightning, gathering their limbs under their bodies. A shock, an unexpected
odour, a loud noise, plunges them instantly into a sort of lethargy, more
or less prolonged. The insect "feigns death," not because it simulates
death, but in reality because this MAGNETIC condition resembles that of
death. (7/9.) Now the Odynerus, the Anthidium, the Eucera, the Ammophila,
and all the hymenoptera which Fabre has observed sleeping at the fall of
night, "suspended in space solely by the strength of their mandibles, their
bodies tense, their limbs retracted, without exhaustion or collapse"; and
the larva of the Empusa, "which for some ten months hangs to a twig by its
limbs, head downwards": do not these present a surprising analogy with
those hypnotized persons who possess the faculty of remaining fixed in the
most painful poses, and of supporting the most unusual attitudes, for an
extremely long time; for instance, with one arm extended, or one foot
raised from the ground, without appearing to experience the least fatigue,
and with a persevering and unfaltering energy? (7/10.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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