What is lacking to complete its happiness? Apparently, a little food, a
few sugary mouthfuls extracted from the flowers. I serve up some
provisions in the tubes: not drops of honey, in which the puny
creatures would get stuck, but little strips of paper spread with that
dainty. They come to them, take their stand on them and refresh
themselves. The fare appears to agree with them. With this diet,
renewed as the strips dry up, I can keep them in very good condition
until the end of my inquisition.
There is another arrangement to be made. The colonists in my spare
tubes are restless and quick of flight; they will have to be
transferred presently to sundry vessels without my risking the loss of
a good number, or even the whole lot, a loss which my hands, my forceps
and other means of coercion would be unable to prevent by checking the
nimble movements of the tiny prisoners. The irresistible attraction of
the sunlight comes to my aid. If I lay one of my tubes horizontally on
the table, turning one end towards the full light of a sunny window,
the captives at once make for this brighter end and play about there
for a long while, without seeking to retreat. If I turn the tube in the
opposite direction, the crowd immediately shifts its quarters and
collects at the other end. The brilliant sunlight is its great joy.
With this bait, I can send it whithersoever I please.
We will therefore place the new receptacle, jar or test-tube, on the
table, pointing the closed end towards the window. At its mouth, we
open one of the full tubes. No other precaution is needed: even though
the mouth leaves a large interval free, the swarm hastens into the
lighted chamber. All that remains to be done is to close the apparatus
before moving it. The observer is now in control of the multitude,
without appreciable losses, and is able to question it at will.
We will begin by asking:
“How do you manage to lodge your germs inside the caterpillar?”
This question and others of the same category, which ought to take
precedence of everything else, are generally neglected by the impaler
of insects, who cares more for the niceties of nomenclature than for
glorious realities. He classifies his subjects, dividing them into
regiments with barbarous labels, a work which seems to him the highest
expression of entomological science. Names, nothing but names: the rest
hardly counts. The persecutor of the Pieris used to be called
Microgaster, that is to say, little belly: to-day she is called
Apantales, that is to say, the incomplete. What a fine step forward! We
now know all about it!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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