Part 11

The departure of the second and third swarms resembles that of the first, and the conditions are identical, with the exception that the bees are fewer in number, less circumspect, and lacking in scouts; and also that the young and virgin queen, being unencumbered and ardent, will fly much further, and in the first stage lead the swarm to a considerable distance from the hive. The conduct of these second and third migrations will be far more rash, and their future more problematical. The queen at their head, the representative of the future, has not yet been impregnated. Their entire destiny depends on the ensuing nuptial flight. A passing bird, a few drops of rain, a mistake, a cold wind--any one of these may give rise to irremediable disaster. Of this the bees are so well aware that when the young queen sallies forth in quest of her lover, they often will abandon the labours they have begun, will forsake the home of a day that already is dear to them, and accompany her in a body, dreading to let her pass out of their sight, eager, as they form closely around her, and shelter her beneath their myriad devoted wings, to lose themselves with her, should love cause her to stray so far from the hive that the as yet unfamiliar road of return shall grow blurred and hesitating in every memory.

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But so potent is the law of the future that none of these uncertainties, these perils of death, will cause a single bee to waver. The enthusiasm displayed by the second and third swarms is not less than that of the first. No sooner has the mother-city pronounced its decision than a battalion of workers will flock around each dangerous young queen, eager to follow her fortunes, to accompany her on the voyage where there is so much to lose, and so little to gain beyond the desire of a satisfied instinct. Whence do they derive the energy we ourselves never possess, whereby they break with the past as though with an enemy? Who is it selects from the crowd those who shall go forth, and declares who shall remain? No special class divides those who stay from those who wander abroad; it will be the younger here and the elder there; around each queen who shall never return veteran foragers jostle tiny workers, who for the first time shall face the dizziness of the blue. Nor is the proportionate strength of a swarm controlled by chance or accident, by the momentary dejection or transport of an instinct, thought, or feeling. I have more than once tried to establish a relation between the number of bees composing a swarm and the number of those that remain; and although the difficulties of this calculation are such as to preclude anything approaching mathematical precision, I have at least been able to gather that this relation--if we take into account the brood-cells, or in other words the forthcoming births--is sufficiently constant to point to an actual and mysterious reckoning on the part of the genius of the hive.

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We will not follow these swarms on their numerous, and often most complicated, adventures. Two swarms, at times, will join forces; at others, two or three of the imprisoned queens will profit by the confusion attending the moment of departure to elude the watchfulness of their guardians and join the groups that are forming. Occasionally, too, one of the young queens, finding herself surrounded by males, will cause herself to be impregnated in the swarming flight, and will then drag all her people to an extraordinary height and distance. In the practice of apiculture these secondary and tertiary swarms are always returned to the mother-hive. The queens will meet on the comb; the workers will gather around and watch their combat; and, when the stronger has overcome the weaker they will then, in their ardour for work and hatred of disorder, expel the corpses, close the door on the violence of the future, forget the past, return to their cells, and resume their peaceful path to the flowers that await them.

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We will now, in order to simplify matters, return to the queen whom the bees have permitted to slaughter her sisters, and resume the account of her adventures. As I have already stated, this massacre will be often prevented, and often sanctioned, at times even when the bees apparently do not intend to issue a second swarm; for we notice the same diversity of political spirit in the different hives of an apiary as in the different human nations of a continent. But it is clear that the bees will act imprudently in giving their consent; for if the queen should die, or stray in the nuptial flight, it will be impossible to fill her place, the workers' larvae having passed the age when they are susceptible of royal transformation. Let us assume, however, that the imprudence has been committed; and behold our first-born, therefore, unique sovereign, and recognised as such in the spirit of her people. But she is still a virgin. To become as was the mother before her, it is essential that she should meet the male within the first twenty days of her life. Should the event for some reason be delayed beyond this period, her virginity becomes irrevocable. And yet we have seen that she is not sterile, virgin though she be. There confronts us here the great mystery--or precaution--of Nature, that is known as parthenogenesis, and is common to a certain number of insects, such as the aphides, the lepidoptera of the Psyche genus, the hymenoptera of the Cynipede family, etc. The virgin queen is able to lay; but from all the eggs that she will deposit in the cells, be these large or small, there will issue males alone; and as these never work, as they live at the expense of the females, as they never go foraging except on their own account, and are generally incapable of providing for their subsistence, the result will be, at the end of some weeks, that the last exhausted worker will perish, and the colony be ruined and totally annihilated. The queen, we have said, will produce thousands of drones; and each of these will possess millions of the spermatozoa whereof it is impossible that a single one can have penetrated into the organism of the mother. That may not be more astounding, perhaps, than a thousand other and analogous phenomena; and, indeed, when we consider these problems, and more especially those of generation, the marvellous and the unexpected confront us so constantly--occurring far more frequently, and above all in far less human fashion, than in the most miraculous fairy stories--that after a time astonishment becomes so habitual with us that we almost cease to wonder. The fact, however, is sufficiently curious to be worthy of notice. But, on the other hand, how shall we explain to ourselves the aim that nature can have in thus favouring the valueless drones at the cost of the workers who are so essential? Is she afraid lest the females might perhaps be induced by their intellect unduly to limit the number of their parasites, which, destructive though they be, are still necessary for the preservation of the race? Or is it merely an exaggerated reaction against the misfortune of the unfruitful queen? Can we have here one of those blind and extreme precautions which, ignoring the cause of the evil, overstep the remedy; and, in the endeavour to prevent an unfortunate accident, bring about a catastrophe? In reality--though we must not forget that the natural, primitive reality is different: from that of the present, for in the original forest the colonies might well be far more scattered than they are to-day--in reality the queen's unfruitfulness will rarely be due to the want of males, for these are very numerous always, and will flock from afar; but rather to the rain, or the cold, that will have kept her too long in the hive, and more frequently still to the imperfect state of her wings, whereby she will be prevented from describing the high flight in the air that the organ of the male demands. Nature, however, heedless of these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply concerned with the multiplication of males, that we sometimes find, in motherless hives, two or three workers possessed of so great a desire to preserve the race that, their atrophied ovaries notwithstanding, they will still endeavour to lay; and, their organs expanding somewhat beneath the empire of this exasperated sentiment, they will succeed in depositing a few eggs in the cells; but from these eggs, as from those of the virgin mother, there will, issue only males.

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Here we behold the active intervention of a superior though perhaps imprudent will, which offers irresistible obstruction to the intelligent will of a life. In the insect world such interventions are comparatively frequent, and much can be gained from their study; for this world being more densely peopled and more complex than others, certain special desires of nature are often more palpably revealed to us there; and she may even at times be detected in the midst of experiments we might almost be warranted in regarding as incomplete. She has one great and general desire, for instance, that she displays on all sides; the amelioration of each species through the triumph of the stronger. This struggle, as a rule, is most carefully organised. The hecatomb of the weak is enormous, but that matters little so long as the victors' reward be effectual and certain. But there are cases when one might almost imagine that nature had not had time enough to disentangle her combinations; cases where reward is impossible, and the fate of the victor no less disastrous than that of the vanquished. And of such, selecting an instance that will not take us too far from our bees, I know of no instance more striking than that of the triongulins of the Sitaris colletes. And it will be seen that, in many details, this story is less foreign to the history of man than might perhaps be imagined.

These triongulins are the primary larvae of a parasite proper to a wild, obtuse-tongued, solitary bee, the Colletes, which builds its nest in subterranean galleries. It is their habit to lie in wait for the bee at the approach to these galleries; and then, to the number of three, four, five, or often of more, they will leap on her back, and bury themselves in her hair. Were the struggle of the weak against the strong to take place at this moment there would be no more to be said, and all would pass in accordance with universal law. But, for a reason we know not, their instinct requires, and nature has consequently ordained, that they should hold themselves tranquil so long as they remain on the back of the bee. They patiently bide their time while she visits the flowers, and constructs and provisions her cells. But no sooner has an egg been laid than they all spring upon it; and the innocent colletes carefully seals down her cell, which she has duly supplied with food, never suspecting that she has at the same time ensured the death of her offspring.

The cell has scarcely been closed when the triongulins grouped round the egg engage in the inevitable and salutary combat of natural selection. The stronger, more agile, will seize its adversary beneath the cuirass, and, raising it aloft, will maintain it for hours in its mandibles until the victim expire. But, while this fight is in progress, another of the triongulins, that had either no rival to meet, or already has conquered, takes possession of the egg and bursts it open. The ultimate victor has therefore this fresh enemy to subdue; but the conquest is easy, for the triongulin, deep in the satisfaction of its pre-natal hunger, clings obstinately to the egg, and does not even attempt to defend itself. It is quickly despatched; and the other is at last alone, and possessor of the precious egg it has won so well. It eagerly plunges its head into the opening its predecessor had made; and begins the lengthy repast that shall transform it into a perfect insect. But nature, that has decreed this ordeal of battle, has, on the other hand, established the prize of victory with such miserly precision that nothing short of an entire egg will suffice for the nourishment of a single triongulin. So that, as we are informed by M. Mayet, to whom we owe the account of these disconcerting adventures, there is lacking to our conqueror the food its last victim consumed before death; and incapable therefore of achieving the first stage of its transformation, it dies in its turn, adhering to the skin of the egg, or adding itself, in the sugary liquid, to the number of the drowned.

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This case, though rarely to be followed so closely, is not unique in natural history. We have here, laid bare before us, the struggle between the conscious will of the triongulin, that seeks to live, and the obscure and general will of nature, that not only desires that the triongulin should live, but is anxious even that its life should be improved, and fortified, to a degree beyond that to which its own will impels it. But, through some strange inadvertence, the amelioration nature imposes suppresses the life of even the fittest, and the Sitaris Colletes would have long since disappeared had not chance, acting in opposition to the desires of nature, permitted isolated individuals to escape from the excellent and far-seeing law that ordains on all sides the triumph of the stronger.

Can this mighty power err, then, that seems unconscious to us, but necessarily wise, seeing that the life she organises and maintains is forever proving her to be right? Can feebleness at times overcome that supreme reason, which we are apt to invoke when we have attained the limits of our own? And if that be so, by whom shall this feebleness be set right?

But let us return to that special form of her resistless intervention that we find in parthenogenesis. And we shall do well to remember that, remote as the world may seem in which these problems confront us, they do indeed yet concern ourselves very nearly. Who would dare to affirm that no interventions take place in the sphere of man--interventions that may be more hidden, but not the less fraught with danger? And in the case before us, which is right, in the end,--the insect, or nature? What would happen if the bees, more docile perhaps, or endowed with a higher intelligence, were too clearly to understand the desires of nature, and to follow them to the extreme; to multiply males to infinity, seeing that nature is imperiously calling for males? Would they not risk the destruction of their species? Are we to believe that there are intentions in nature that it is dangerous to understand too clearly, fatal to follow with too much ardour; and that it is one of her desires that we should not divine, and follow, all her desires? Is it not possible that herein there may lie one of the perils of the human race? We too are aware of unconscious forces within us, that would appear to demand the reverse of what our intellect urges. And this intellect of ours, that, as a rule, its own boundary reached, knows not whither to go--can it be well that it should join itself to these forces, and add to them its unexpected weight?

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Have we the right to conclude, from the dangers of parthenogenesis, that nature is not always able to proportion the means to the end; and that what she intends to preserve is preserved at times by means of precautions she has to contrive against her own precautions, and often through foreign circumstances she has not herself foreseen? But is there anything she does foresee, anything she does intend to preserve? Nature, some may say, is a word wherewith we clothe the unknowable; and few things authorise our crediting it with intelligence, or with aim. That is true. We touch here the hermetically sealed vases that furnish our conception of the universe. Reluctant, over and over again, to label these with the inscription "UNKNOWN," that disheartens us and compels us to silence, we engrave upon them, in the degree of their size and grandeur, the words "Nature, life, death, infinite, selection, spirit of the race," and many others, even as those who went before us affixed the words "God, Providence, destiny, reward," etc. Let it be so, if one will, and no more. But, though the contents of the vases remain obscure, there is gain at least in the fact that the inscriptions to-day convey less menace to us, that we are able therefore to approach them and touch them, and lay our ears close to them and listen, with wholesome curiosity.

But whatever the name we attach to these vases, it is certain that one of them, at least, and the greatest--that which bears on its flank the name "Nature"--encloses a very real force, the most real of all, and one that is able to preserve an enormous and marvellous quantity and quality of life on our globe, by means so skilful that they surpass all that the genius of man could contrive. Could this quantity and quality be maintained by other means? Is it we who deceive ourselves when we imagine that we see precautions where perhaps there is truly no more than a fortunate chance, that has survived a million unfortunate chances?

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That may be; but these fortunate chances teach us a lesson in admiration as valuable as those we might learn in regions superior to chance. If we let our gaze travel beyond the creatures that are possessed of a glimmer of intellect and consciousness, beyond the protozoa even, which are the first nebulous representatives of the dawning animal kingdom, we find, as has been abundantly proved by the experiments of Mr. H. J. Carter, the celebrated microscopist, that the very lowest embryos, such as the myxomycetes, manifest a will and desires and preferences; and that infusoria, which apparently have no organism whatever, give evidence of a certain cunning. The Amoebae, for instance, will patiently lie in wait for the new-born Acinetes, as they leave the maternal ovary; being aware that these must as yet be lacking their poisonous tentacles. Now, the Amoebae have neither a nervous system nor distinguishable organs of any kind. Or if we turn to the plants, which, being motionless, would seem exposed to every fatality,--without pausing to consider carnivorous species like the Drusera, which really act as animals,--we are struck by the genius that some of our humblest flowers display in contriving that the visit of the bee shall infallibly procure them the crossed fertilisation they need. See the marvellous fashion in which the Orchis Moris, our humble country orchid, combines the play of its rostellum and retinacula; observe the mathematical and automatic inclination and adhesion of its pollinia; as also the unerring double seesaw of the anthers of the wild sage, which touch the body of the visiting insect at a particular spot in order that the insect may, in its turn, touch the stigma of the neighbouring flower at another particular spot; watch, too, in the case of the Pedicularis Sylvatica, the successive, calculated movements of its stigma; and indeed the entrance of the bee into any one of these three flowers sets every organ vibrating, just as the skilful marksman who hits the black spot on the target will cause all the figures to move in the elaborate mechanisms we see in our village fairs.

We might go lower still, and show, as Ruskin has shown in his "Ethics of the Dust," the character, habits, and artifices of crystals; their quarrels, and mode of procedure, when a foreign body attempts to oppose their plans, which are more ancient by far than our imagination can conceive; the manner in which they admit or repel an enemy, the possible victory of the weaker over the stronger, as, for instance, when the all-powerful quartz submits to the humble and wily epidote, and allows this last to conquer it; the struggle, terrible sometimes and sometimes magnificent, between the rock-crystal and iron; the regular, immaculate expansion and uncompromising purity of one hyaline block, which rejects whatever is foul, and the sickly growth, the evident immorality, of its brother, which admits corruption, and writhes miserably in the void; as we might quote also the strange phenomena of crystalline cicatrisation and reintegration mentioned by Claude Bernard, etc. But the mystery here becomes too foreign to us. Let us keep to our flowers, which are the last expression of a life that has yet some kinship with our own. We are not dealing now with animals or insects, to which we attribute a special, intelligent will, thanks to which they survive. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that the flowers possess no such will; at least we cannot discover in them the slightest trace of the organs wherein will, intellect, and initiative of action, are usually born and reside. It follows, therefore, that all that acts in them in so admirable a fashion must directly proceed from what we elsewhere call nature. We are no longer concerned with the intellect of the individual; here we find the un conscious, undivided force in the act of ensnaring other forms of itself. Shall we on that account refuse to believe that these snares are pure accidents, occurring in accordance with a routine that is also incidental? We are not yet entitled to such a deduction. It might be urged that these flowers, had these miraculous combinations not been, would not have survived, but would have had their place filled by others that stood in no need of crossed fertilisation; and the non-existence of the first would have been perceived by none, nor would the life that vibrates on the earth have seemed less incomprehensible to us, less diverse, or less astounding.

And yet it would be difficult not to admit that acts which bear all the appearance of acts of intelligence and prudence produce and support these fortunate chances. Whence do they issue,--from the being itself, or from the force whence that being draws life? I will not say "it matters but little," for, on the contrary, to know the answer were of supreme importance to us. But, in the meantime, and till we shall learn whether it be the flower that endeavours to maintain and perfect the life that nature has placed within it, or whether it be nature that puts forth an effort to maintain and improve the degree of existence the flower has assumed, or finally whether it be chance that ultimately governs chance, a multitude of semblances invite us to believe that something equal to our loftiest thoughts issues at times from a common source, that we are compelled to admire without knowing where it resides.

There are moments when what seems error to us comes forth from this common source. But, although we know very few things, proofs abound that the seeming error was in reality an act of prudence that we at first could not grasp. In the little circle, even, that our eyes embrace we are constantly shown that what we regarded as nature's blunder close by was due to her deeming it well to adjust the presumed inadvertence out yonder. She has placed the three flowers we mentioned under conditions of such difficulty that they are unable to fertilise themselves; she considers it beneficial, therefore, for reasons beyond our powers of perception, that they should cause themselves to be fertilised by their neighbours; and, inasmuch as she enhances the intelligence of her victims, she displays on our right the genius she failed to display on our left. The byways of this genius of hers remain incomprehensible to us, but its level is always the same. It will appear to fall into error--assuming that error be possible--thereupon rising again at once in the organ charged to repair this error. Turn where we may, it towers high over our heads. It is the circular ocean, the tideless water, whereon our boldest and most independent thoughts will never be more than mere abject bubbles. We call it Nature to-day; to-morrow, perhaps, we shall give it another name, softer or more alarming. In the meanwhile it holds simultaneous, impartial sway over life and death; furnishing the two irreconcilable sisters with the magnificent and familiar weapons that adorn and distract its bosom.

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Does this force take measures to maintain what may be struggling on its surface, or must we say, arguing in the strangest of circles, that what floats on its surface must guard itself against the genius that has given it life? That question must be left open. We have no means of ascertaining whether it be notwithstanding the efforts of the superior will, or independently of these, or lastly because of these, that a species has been able to survive.

All we can say is that such a species exists, and that, on this point, therefore, nature would seem to be right. But who shall tell us how many others that we have not known have fallen victim to her restless and forgetful intellect? Beyond this, we can recognise only the surprising and occasionally hostile forms that the extraordinary fluid we call life assumes, in utter unconsciousness sometimes, at others with a kind of consciousness: the fluid which animates us equally with all the rest, which produces the very thoughts that judge it, and the feeble voice that attempts to tell its story.

VI -- THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT

WE will now consider the manner in which the impregnation of the queen-bee comes to pass. Here again nature has taken extraordinary measures to favour the union of males with females of a different stock; a strange law, whereto nothing would seem to compel her; a caprice, or initial inadvertence, perhaps, whose reparation calls for the most marvellous forces her activity knows.