4 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



damp food to dry in the sun. There came a starving 

 Cigale to beg from them. She begged for a few grains. 

 The greedy misers replied : * You sang in the summer, 

 now dance in the winter.' " This, although somewhat 

 more arid, is precisely La Fontaine's story, and is 

 contrary to the facts. 



Yet the story comes to us from Greece, which is, like 

 the South of France, the home of the olive-tree and the 

 Cigale. Was ^sop really its author, as tradition would 

 have it ? It is doubtful, and by no means a matter of 

 importance ; at all events, the author was a Greek, and a 

 compatriot of the Cigale, which must have been perfectly 

 familiar to him. There is not a single peasant in my 

 village so blind as to be unaware of the total absence of 

 Cigales in winter ; and every tiller of the soil, every 

 gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the insect, the 

 larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when 

 he banks up the olives at the approach of the cold 

 weather, and he knows, having seen it a thousand times 

 by the edge of the country paths, how in summer this 

 larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its 

 own making ; how it climbs a twig or a stem of grass, 

 turns upon its back, climbs out of its skin, drier now 

 than parchment, and becomes the Cigale ; a creature 

 of a fresh grass-green colour which is rapidly replaced 

 by brown. 



We cannot suppose that the Greek peasant was so much 

 less intelligent than the Provencal that he can have 

 failed to see what the least observant must have noticed. 

 He knew what my rustic neighbours know so well. 

 The scribe, whoever he may have been, who was 

 responsible for the fable was in the best possible 



