The English Review

July 1921

Austin Harrison

• Publisher: Left of Brain Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781396317798
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Collections littéraires européennes

Marvel in the beauty of 20th century English literature.This book takes you back in time to journey among the best writers in England at the time of the first World War.It's the July 1921 edition of The English Review magazine, which was started "in a rage that there was no place in England to print a poem by Thomas Hardy" and a place for writers to express their feelings and political concerns through their art.It includes poems, letters, and essays about subjects varying from love and nature to philosophy, religion, and politics. It provides a unique insight on the everyday thoughts of people at times of war, displays 20th century culture and literature, and has contributions from prominent authors like Lord Gorell, Thomas Moult, and Austin Harrison himself."In peaceful oceans of the dew,
The island Juniper
Stand up and watch the night renew
Her starry hemisphere
I'm in the berried hush, my love,
Where night is on the down.
I would the dews might rise above
My heart-and passion drown!"

THE POMPILI¹

By Henri Fabre

The victims of many Wasps that hunt prey on behalf of their larvæ allow themselves to be operated upon by the paralyser, submitting stupidly, without offering much resistance. The mandibles gape, the legs kick and protest, the body wriggles and twists; and that is all. They have no weapons capable of contending with the assassin’s dagger. I should like to see the huntress grappling with an imposing adversary, one as crafty as herself, an expert layer of ambushes and, like her, bearing a poisoned dirk. I should like to see the bandit armed with the stiletto confronted with another bandit equally familiar with the use of that weapon. Is such a duel possible? Yes, it is quite possible and even common. On the one side are the Pompili, the champions who are always victorious; on the other hand are the Spiders, the champions who are always overthrown.

Who that has diverted himself, however little, with the study of insects does not know the Pompili? Against old walls, at the foot of the banks beside unfrequented footpaths, in the stubble after the harvest, in the tangles of dry grass, wherever the Spider spreads her nets, who has not seen them busily at work, now running hither and thither, at random, their wings raised and quivering above their backs, now moving from place to place in flights long or short? They are hunting for a quarry which might easily turn the tables and itself prey upon the trapper lying in wait for it.

The Pompili feed their larvæ solely on Spiders; and the Spiders feed on any insect commensurate with their size that is caught in their nets. While the first possess a sting, the second have two poisoned fangs. Often their strength is equally matched; indeed, the advantage is not seldom on the Spider’s side. The Wasp has her ruses of war, her cunningly premeditated strokes; the Spider has her wiles and her set traps; the first has the advantage of great rapidity of movement, while the second is able to rely upon her perfidious web; the one has a sting which contrives to penetrate the exact point to cause paralysis, the other has fangs which bite the back of the neck and deal sudden death. We find the paralyser on the one hand and the slaughterer on the other. Which of the two will become the other’s prey?

If we consider only the relative strength of the adversaries, the power of their weapons, the virulence of their poisons and their different modes of action, the scale would very often be weighted in favour of the Spider. Since the Pompilus always emerges victorious from this contest, which appears to be full of peril for her, she must have a special method, of which I would fain learn the secret.

In our part of the country, the most powerful and courageous Spider-huntress is the Ringed Pompilus, clad in black and yellow. She stands high on her legs; and her wings have black tips, the rest being yellow, as though exposed to smoke, like a bloater. Her size is about that of the Hornet. She is rare. I see three or four of her in the course of the year; and I never fail to halt in the presence of the proud creature, rapidly striding through the dust of the fields when the dog-days arrive. Its audacious air, its uncouth gait, its war-like bearing long made me suspect that to obtain its prey it had to make some impossible, terrible, unspeakable capture. And my guess was correct. By dint of waiting and watching I beheld that victim; I saw it in the huntress’ mandibles. It is the Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible Spider who slays a Carpenter-bee or a Bumble-bee outright with one stroke of her weapon; the Spider who kills a Sparrow or a Mole; the formidable creature whose bite would perhaps not be without danger to ourselves. Yes, this is the bill of fare which the proud Pompilus provides for her larva.

This spectacle, one of the most striking with which the Hunting Wasps have ever provided me, has as yet been offered to my eyes but once. I can still see the intrepid poacher dragging by the leg, at the foot of the wall, the monstrous prize which she had just secured, doubtless at no great distance. At the base of the wall was a hole, an accidental chink between some of the stones. The Wasp inspected the cavern, not for the first time: she had already reconnoitred it and the premises had satisfied her. The prey, deprived of the power of movement, was waiting somewhere, I know not where; and the huntress had gone back to fetch it and store it away. It was at this moment that I met her. The Pompilus gave a last glance at the cave, removed a few small fragments of loose mortar; and with that her preparations were completed. The Tarantula was introduced, dragged along, belly upwards, by one leg. I did not interfere. Presently the Wasp reappeared on the surface and carelessly pushed in front of the hole the bits of mortar which she had just extracted from it. Then she flew away. It was all over. The egg was laid; the insect had finished for better or for worse; and I was able to proceed with my examination of the burrow and its contents.

The Pompilus has done no digging. It is really an accidental hole with spacious winding passages, the result of the mason’s negligence and not of the Wasp’s industry. The closing of the cavity is quite rough and ready. A few crumbs of mortar, heaped up before the doorway, form a barricade rather than a door. A mighty hunter makes a poor architect. The Tarantula’s murderess does not know how to dig a cell for her larva; she does not know how to fill up the entrance by sweeping dust into it. The first hole encountered at the foot of a wall contents her, provided that it be roomy enough; a little heap of rubbish will do for a door. Nothing could be more expeditious.

I withdraw the game from the hole. The egg is stuck to the Spider, near the beginning of the belly. A clumsy movement on my part makes it fall off at the moment of extraction. It is all over; the thing will not hatch; I shall not be able to observe the development of the larva. The Tarantula lies motionless, flexible as in life, with not a trace of a wound. In short, we have here life without movement. From time to time the tips of the tarsi quiver a little; and that is all. Accustomed of old to these deceptive corpses, I can see in my mind’s eye what has happened the Spider has been stung in the region of the thorax, no doubt once only, in view of the concentration of her nervous system. I place the victim in a box in which it retains all the pliancy and all the freshness of life, from the 2nd of August to the 20th of September, that is to say, for seven weeks.

The most important matter has escaped me. What I wanted, what I still want to see is the Pompilus engaged in mortal combat with the Tarantula. What a duel, in which the cunning of the one has to overcome the terrible weapons of the other! Does the Wasp enter the burrow to surprise the Tarantula at the bottom of her lair? Such temerity would be fatal to her. Where the big Bumble-bee dies an instant death, the audacious visitor would perish the moment she entered. Is not the other there, facing her, ready to snap at the back of her head, inflicting a wound which would result in sudden death? No, the Pompilus does not enter the Spider’s parlour, that is obvious. Does she surprise the Spider outside her fortress? But the Tarantula is a stay-at-home animal: I do not see her straying abroad during the summer. Later, in the autumn, when the Pompili have disappeared, she wanders about; turning gipsy, she takes the open air with her numerous family, which she carries on her back. Apart from these maternal strolls, she does not appear to me to leave her castle; and the Pompilus, I should think, has no great chance of meeting her outside. The problem, we perceive, is becoming complicated: the huntress cannot make her way into the burrow, where she would risk sudden death; and the Spider’s sedentary habits make an encounter outside the burrow improbable. Here is a riddle which it would be interesting to decipher. Let us endeavour to do so by observing other Spider-hunters; analogy will enable us to draw a conclusion.

I have often watched Pompili of every species on their hunting-expeditions, but I have never surprised them entering the Spider’s lodging when the latter was at home. Whether this lodging be a funnel plunging its neck into a hole in some wall, an awning stretched amid the stubble, a tent modelled upon the Arab’s, a sheath formed of a few leaves bound together, or a net with a guard-room attached, whenever the owner is indoors the suspicious Pompilus holds aloof. When the dwelling is vacant, it is another matter: the Wasp moves with arrogant ease over those webs and cables in which so many other insects would remain ensnared. The silken threads do not seem to have any hold upon her. What is she doing, exploring these empty webs? She is watching to see what is happening on the adjacent webs where the Spider is ambushed. The Pompilus, therefore, feels an insuperable reluctance to make straight for the Spider when the latter is at home in the midst of her snares. And she is right, a hundred times over. If the Tarantula understands the practice of the dagger-thrust in the neck, which is immediately fatal, the other cannot be unacquainted with it. Woe then to the imprudent Wasp who presents herself upon the threshold of a Spider of approximately equal strength!

Of the various instances which I have collected of this cautious reserve on the Spider-huntress’ part I will confine myself to the following, which will be sufficient to prove my point. By joining, with silken strands, the three leaflets which form the leaf of Virgil’s cytisus, a Spider has built herself a green arbour, a horizontal sheath, open at either end. A questing Pompilus comes upon the scene, finds the game to her liking and pops in her head at the entrance of the cell. The Spider immediately retreats to the other end. The huntress goes round the Spider’s dwelling and reappears at the other door. Again the Spider retreats, returning to the first entrance. The Wasp also returns to it, but always by the outside. Scarcely has she done so, when the Spider rushes for the opposite opening; and so on for fully a quarter of an hour, both of them coming and going from one end of the cylinder to the other, the Spider inside and the Pompilus outside.

The quarry was a valuable one, it seems, since the Wasp persisted for a long time in her attempts, which were invariably defeated; the huntress had to abandon them, however, baffled by this perpetual running to and fro. The Pompilus made off; and the Spider, once more on the watch, patiently awaited the heedless Midges. What should the Wasp have done to capture this much-coveted game? She should have entered the verdant cylinder, the Spider’s dwelling, and pursued the Spider direct, in her own house, instead of remaining outside, going from one door to the other. With such swiftness and dexterity as hers, it seemed to me impossible that the stroke should fail; the quarry moved clumsily, a little sideways, like a Crab. I judged it to be an easy matter; the Pompilus thought it highly dangerous. To-day I am of her opinion; if she had entered the leafy tube, the mistress of the house would have operated on her neck and the huntress would have become the quarry.

Years passed and the paralyser of the Spiders still refused to reveal her secret; I was badly served by circumstances, could find no leisure, was absorbed in unrelenting preoccupations. At length the light dawned upon me. My garden at Orange was enclosed by an old wall, blackened and ruined by time, where, in the chinks between the stones, lived a population of Spiders, represented more particularly by the common Cellar Spider, or Segestria.

She is deep black all over, excepting the mandibles, which are a splendid metallic green. Her two poisoned daggers look like a product of the metal-worker’s art, like the finest bronze. In any mass of abandoned masonry there is not a quiet corner, not a hole the size of one’s finger, in which the Segestria does not set up house. Her web is a widely flaring funnel, whose open end, at most a span across, lies spread upon the surface of the wall, where it is held in place by radiating threads. This conical surface is continued by a tube which runs into a hole in the wall. At the end is the dining-room to which the Spider retires to devour at her ease her captured prey.

With her two hind-legs stuck into the tube to obtain a purchase and the six others spread around the orifice, the better to perceive on every side the quiver which gives the signal of a capture, the Segestria waits motionless, at the entrance of her funnel, for an insect to become entangled in the snare. Large Flies, Drone-flies, dizzily grazing some thread of the snare with their wings, are her usual victims. At the first flutter of the netted Fly, the Spider runs or even leaps forward, but she is now secured by a cord which escapes from the spinnerets and which has its end fastened to the silken tube. This prevents her from falling as she darts along a vertical surface. Bitten at the back of the head, the Drone-fly is dead in a moment; and the Segestria carries him into her lair.

Thanks to this method and these hunting-appliances—an ambush at the bottom of a silken whirlpool, radiating snares, a life-line which holds her from behind and allows her to take a sudden rush without risking a fall—the Segestria is able to catch game less inoffensive than the Drone-fly. A Common Wasp, they tell me, does not daunt her. Though I have not tested this, I readily believe it, for I well know the Spider’s boldness. This boldness is reinforced by the activity of the venom. Without being serious to man, the sting causes sharp pain and swelling. It must be a terrible thing for insects, whether because of the small size of the victim or because it acts with special efficacy upon an organisation which differs widely from our own. One Pompilus, though greatly inferior to the Segestria in size and strength, nevertheless makes war upon the Cellar Spider and succeeds in overpowering this formidable quarry. This is the Bee Pompilus, who is hardly larger than the Hive-bee and very much slenderer. She is of a uniform black; her wings are a cloudy brown, with transparent tips. Let us follow her in her expeditions to the old wall inhabited by the Segestria.

The Spider-huntress explores the wall minutely; she runs, leaps and flies; she comes and goes, flitting to and fro. The antennæ quiver; the wings, raised above the back, continually beat one against the other. Ah, here she is, close to a Segestria’s funnel! The Spider, who has hitherto remained invisible, instantly appears at the entrance to the tube; she spreads her six forelegs outside, ready to receive the huntress. Far from fleeing before the terrible apparition, she watches the watcher, fully prepared to prey upon her enemy. Before this intrepid demeanour the Pompilus draws back. She examines the coveted game, walks round it for a moment, then goes away without attempting anything. When she has gone, the Segestria retires indoors, backwards. For the second time the Wasp passes near an inhabited funnel. The Spider on the look out at once shows herself on the threshold of her dwelling, half out of her tube, ready for defence and perhaps also for attack. The Pompilus moves away and the Segestria reenters her tube. A fresh alarm: the Pompilus returns; another threatening demonstration on the part of the Spider. Her neighbour, a little later, does better than this: while the huntress is prowling about in the neighbourhood of the funnel, she suddenly leaps out of the tube, with the life-line which will save her from falling, should she miss her footing, attached to her spinnerets; she rushes forward and hurls herself in front of the Pompilus, at a distance of some eight inches from her burrow. The Wasp, as though terrified, immediately decamps; and the Segestria no less suddenly retreats indoors.

Here, we must admit, is a strange quarry: it does not hide, but is eager to show itself; it does not run away, but flings itself in front of the hunter. If our observations were to cease here, could we say which of the two is the hunter and which the hunted? Should we not feel sorry for the imprudent Pompilus? Let a thread of the trap entangle her leg; and it is all up with her. The other will be there, stabbing her in the throat. What, then, is the method which she employs against the Segestria, always on the alert, ready for defence, audacious to the point of aggression? Shall I surprise the reader if I tell him that this problem filled me with the most eager interest, that it held me for weeks in contemplation before that cheerless wall? Nevertheless, my tale will be a short one.

On several occasions I see the Pompilus suddenly fling herself on one of the Spider’s legs, seize it with her mandibles and endeavour to draw the animal from its tube. It is a sudden rush, a surprise attack, too quick to permit the Spider to parry it. Fortunately, the latter’s two hind legs are firmly hooked to the dwelling; and the Segestria escapes with a jerk, for the other, having delivered her shock attack, hastens to release her hold; if she persisted, the affair might end badly for her. Having failed in this assault, the Wasp repeats the procedure at other funnels; she will even return to the first when the alarm is somewhat assuaged. Still hopping and fluttering, she prowls around the mouth, whence the Segestria watches her, with her legs outspread. She waits for the propitious moment; she leaps forward, seizes a leg, tugs at it and springs out of reach. More often than not, the Spider holds fast; sometimes she is dragged out of the tube, to a distance of a few inches, but immediately returns, no doubt with the aid of her unbroken life-line.

The Pompilus’ intention is plain: she wants to eject the Spider from her fortress and fling her some distance away. So much perseverance leads to success. This time all goes well: with a vigorous and well-timed tug the Wasp has pulled the Segestria out and at once lets her drop to the ground. Bewildered by her fall and even more demoralized by being wrested from her ambush, the Spider is no longer the bold adversary that she was. She draws her legs together and cowers into a depression in the soil. The huntress is there on the instant to operate on the evicted animal. I have barely time to draw near to watch the tragedy when the victim is paralysed by a thrust of the sting in the thorax.

Here at last, in all its Machiavellian cunning, is the shrewd method of the Pompilus. She would be risking her life if she attacked the Segestria in her home: the Wasp is so convinced of it that she takes good care not to commit this imprudence; but she knows also that, once dislodged from her dwelling, the Spider is ...