Now what do we find under the shelter of the oak? Turf, dead leaves, more or less pickled by decay, dry twigs cased in lichens, broken stones with cushions of moss and, lastly, mould, the final residue of vegetable matters wrought upon by time. Under the tufts of the centaury on which the Golden Cryptocephalus browses lies a black bed of the miscellaneous refuse of the plant.
I try a little of everything, but nothing answers my expectations very positively. I observe, nevertheless, that a few disdainful mouthfuls are taken, a little bit here, a little bit there, enough to tell me the nature of the first layers which the grub adds to its natal sheath. With the exception of the Taxicorn Clythra, whose egg, with its suspension-stalk, seems to denote rather special habits, I see my several charges begin to prolong their sh.e.l.l with a brown paste, similar in appearance to that with whose manufacture and employment we are already familiar.
Discouraged by a food which does not suit them and perhaps also tried by a season of exceptional drouth, my young potters soon relinquish their task; they die after adding a shallow rim to their pots.
Only the Long-legged Clythra thrives and repays me amply for my troublesome nursing. I provide it with chips of old bark taken from the first tree to hand, the oak, the olive, the fig-tree and many others. I soften them by steeping them for a short time in water. The cork-like crusts, however, are not what my boarders eat. The actual food, the b.u.t.ter on the bread, is on the surface. There is a little here of all that the first beginnings of vegetable life add to old tree-trunks, all that breaks up decrepit age to turn it into perpetual youth.
There are tufts of moss, hardly a twelfth of an inch in height, which were sleeping droughtily under the merciless sun of the dog-days, but which a bath in a gla.s.s of water awakens at once. They now display their ring of green leaflets, brightened up and restored to life for a few hours. There are leprous efflorescences, with their white or yellow dust; tiny lichens radiating in ash-grey straps and covered with glaucous, white-edged shields, great round eyes that seem to gaze from the depths of the limbo in which dead matter comes to life again.
There are collemas, which, after a shower, become dark and bloated and shake like jellies; sphaerias, whose pustules stand out like ebony teats, full of myriads of tiny sacs, each containing eight pretty seeds. A glance through the microscope at the contents of one of these teats, a speck only just visible to the eye, reveals an astounding world: an infinity of procreative wealth in an atom. Ah, what a beautiful thing life is, even on a chip of rotten bark no bigger than a finger-nail! What a garden! What a treasure-house!
This is the best pasture put to the test. My Clythrae graze upon it, gathering in dense herds at the most luxuriant spots. One would take this heap for pinches of some brown, modelled seed or other, the snapdragon"s, for instance; but these particular seeds push and sway; if one of them moves the least bit, the sh.e.l.ls all clash together.
Others wander about, in search of a good place, staggering and tumbling under the weight of the overcoat; they wander at random through that great and s.p.a.cious world, the bottom of my cup.
Not a fortnight has elapsed before a strip, built up on the rim, has doubled the length of the Long-legged Clythra"s sh.e.l.l, in order to maintain the capacity of the earthenware jar in proportion to the size of the grub, which has been growing from day to day. The recent portion, the work of the larva, is very plainly distinguishable from the original sh.e.l.l, the product of the mother; it is smooth over its whole extent, whereas the rest is ornamented with tiny holes arranged in spiral rows.
Planed away inside as it becomes too tight, the jar grows wider and at the same time longer. The dust taken from it, once more kneaded into mortar, is reapplied outside, more or less everywhere, and forms a rubble under which the original beauties end by disappearing. The neatly-pitted masterpiece is swamped by a layer of brown plasterwork; not always entirely, however, even when the structure reaches its final dimensions. If we pa.s.s an attentive lens between the two humps at the lower end, we very often see, encrusted in the earthy ma.s.s, the remains of the sh.e.l.l of the egg. This is the potter"s mark. The arrangement of the spiral ridges, the number and the shape of the pits enable us almost to read the name of the maker, Clythra or Cryptocephalus.
From the very first I could not imagine the worker in ceramic paste designing its own pottery by drafting the first outlines. My doubts were justified. The grubs of the Clythra and the Cryptocephalus possess a maternal legacy in the shape of a sh.e.l.l, a garment which they have only to enlarge. They are born the owners of a layette which becomes the groundwork of their trousseau. They increase it, without, however, imitating its artistic elegance. A more vigorous age discards the laces in which the mother delights to clothe the new-born child.