100 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



the juices flow from it. This specific, I am told, is 

 sovereign. All sufferers from blue and swollen fingers 

 should without fail, according to traditional usage, have 

 recourse to the tigno. 



Is it really efficacious ? Despite the general belief, I 

 venture to doubt it, after fruitless experiments on my 

 own fingers and those of other members of my household 

 during the winter of 1895, when the severe and persistent 

 cold produced an abundant crop of chilblains. None 

 of us, treated with the celebrated unguent, observed the 

 swelling to diminish ; none of us found that the pain 

 and discomfort was in the least assuaged by the sticky 

 varnish formed by the juices of the crushed tigno. It 

 is not easy to believe that others are more successful, 

 but the popular renown of the specific survives in spite 

 of all, probably thanks to a simple accident of identity 

 between the name of the remedy and that of the 

 infirmity : the Provengal for ^' chilblain " is tigno. 

 From the moment when the chilblain and the nest of 

 the Mantis were known by the same name were not 

 the virtues of the latter obvious ? So are reputations 

 created. 



In my own village, and doubtless to some extent 

 throughout the Midi, the tigno — the nest of the Mantis, 

 not the chilblain — is also reputed as a marvellous cure 

 for toothache. It is enough to carry it upon the person 

 to be free of that lamentable affection. Women wise in 

 such matters gather them beneath a propitious moon, 

 and preserve them piously in some corner of the clothes- 

 press or wardrobe. They sew them in the lining of the 

 pocket, lest they should be pulled out with the hand- 

 kerchief and lost ; they will grant the loan of them to a 



