IO8 77/7: INSECT WORLD. 



The ant is carnivorous, and although it likes honey, it has nothing to 

 do with grains of wheat, nor with any other grain, of which, according 

 to the fabulist, it had laid up a stock. On the other hand, the Cicada, 

 which he blames for having 



" Pas un seul petit morceau 

 De mouche ou de vermisseau," 



never dreamt of such victuals, for it lives entirely on the sap of large 

 vegetables. The fables of the poet, who is called in France, one 

 never knows why, " Le bon La Fontaine," teem with errors of the same 

 kind as those we have just pointed out. The habits of animals are 

 nearly always represented as exactly the contrary to what they really 

 are. To initiate himself into the mysteries of the habits of animals, 

 La Fontaine certainly had neither the works of Buffon nor the 

 memoirs of Reaumur, which had not then been written ; but had he 

 not the book of Nature ? 



But it is time to mention the principal species of the Cicada. We 

 will describe two : that of the Ash, which lives on those trees in the 

 south of France ; and that of the Manna Ash, which is very common 

 in the south-east of France. It is particularly plentiful in the forests 

 of pines which abound between Bayonne and Bordeaux. It is on 

 these two species of Cicada that Reaumur made the beautiful 

 observations of which we gave a summary above. 



The Cicada plebeia or Tettigonia fraxini, very common in Pro- 

 vence, is found, though rarely, in the forest of Fontainebleau, 

 occasionally in La Brie. It is of a grey yellow below, black above ; 

 the head and thorax are marked or striped with black. 



M. Solier, in a Memoir inserted in the " Annales de la Societe Ento- 

 mologique de France," says that its song, very loud and very piercing, 

 seems to consist of one single note, repeated with rapidity, which in- 

 sensibly grows weaker after a certain time, and terminates in a kind 

 of whistle, which can be partly imitated by pronouncing the two con- 

 sonants J/, and which resembles the noise of the air coming out of a 

 .little opening in a compressed bladder. When the Cicada sings, it 

 moves its abdomen violently, in such a manner as alternately to 

 move it away from, and to bring it near to, the little covers of the 

 sonorous cavities ; to this movement is added a slight trembling of 

 the mesothorax. 



The same entomologist relates a very interesting observation 

 made on this species of Cicada by his friend, M. Boyer, a chemist at 

 Aix, and which he himself verified. The Cicadas, in general, are 

 very timid, and fly away at the least noise. However, when a 



