The Cicada: the Transformation 



The stuff is unanimously admitted to be 

 eatable. True, we are people blessed with 

 good appetites and wholly unprejudiced 

 stomachs. There is even a slightly shrimpy 

 flavour which would be found in a still more 

 pronounced form in a brochette of Locusts. 

 It is, however, as tough as the devil and 

 anything but succulent; we really feel as if 

 we were chewing bits of parchment. I will 

 not recommend to anybody the dish extolled 

 by Aristotle. 



Certainly, the renowned animal-historian 

 was remarkably well-informed as a rule. 

 His royal pupil sent on his behalf to India, 

 the land at that time so full of mystery, for 

 the curiosities most impressive to Mace- 

 donian eyes; he received by caravan the 

 Elephant, the Panther, the Tiger, the 

 Rhinoceros, the Peacock; and he described 

 them faithfully. But, in Macedonia itself, 

 he knew the insect only through the peasant, 

 that stubborn tiller of the soil, who found 

 the tettigometra under his spade and was 

 the first to know that a Cicada comes out of 

 it. Aristotle, therefore, in his immense un- 

 dertaking, was doing more or less what 

 Pliny was to do later, with a much greater 

 amount of artless credulity. He listened to 

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