290 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



before the conquest. They are still known as ayacot, 

 especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. 

 One day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous 

 scholar. Hearing my name, he rushed at me and asked 

 if it was I who had discovered the etymology of the 

 word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact 

 that I had written verses and published the Trop/iees." — 



A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his 

 famous sonnets as second in importance to the nomen- 

 clature of a vegetable ! I in my turn was delighted with 

 his ayacot. How right I was to suspect the outlandish 

 ^ord of American Indian origin ! How right the insect 

 was, in testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious 

 bean came to us from the New World ! While still 

 retaining its original name — or something sufficiently 

 like it — the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec ayacot, 

 has migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of 

 Europe. 



But it has reached us without the company of its 

 licensed consumer ; for there must assuredly be a weevil 

 in its native country which levies tribute on its nourishing 

 tissues. Our native bean-eaters have mistaken the stranger ; 

 they have not had time as yet to grow familiar with it, 

 or to appreciate its merits; they have prudently abstained 

 from touching the ayacot, whose novelty awoke suspicion. 

 Until our own days the Mexican bean remained 

 untouched : unlike our other leguminous seeds, which 

 are all eagerly exploited by the weevil. 



This state of affairs could not last. If our own fields 

 do not contain the insect amateur of the haricot the 

 New World knows it well enough. By the road of 

 commercial exchange, sooner or later some worm-eaten 



