The Life of the Grasshopper 



various ways of making history, the surest 

 way is to do harm to others. 1 



Nobody asks after the Dung-beetle and 

 the Necrophorus, 2 invaluable scavengers 

 both, whereas everybody knows the Gnat, 

 that drinker of men's blood ; the Wasp, that 

 hot-tempered swashbuckler, with her poi- 

 soned dagger; and the Ant, that notorious 

 evil-doer, who, in our southern villages, saps 

 and imperils the rafters of a dwelling with 

 the same zest with which she devours a fig. 

 I need not trouble to say more: every one 

 will discover in the records of mankind 

 similar instances of usefulness ignored and 

 frightfulness exalted. 



The massacre instituted by the Ants and 

 other exterminators is so great that my erst- 

 while populous colonies in the enclosure be- 

 come too small to enable me to continue my 

 observations; and I am driven to have re- 

 course to information outside. In August, 

 among the fallen leaves, in those little oases 

 where the grass has not been wholly scorched 

 by the sun, I find the young Cricket already 

 rather big, black all over like the adult, 



1 For the author's only essay on Ants, cf. The Mason- 

 bees: chap. vi. Translator's Note. 



*Or Burying-beetle. Translator's Note. 



