110 THE INSECT WOKLD. 



November or of December. But at this season of the year the 

 Cicada has a long time since passed from life to death. When 

 one wanders along the outskirts of woods as early as the month 

 of October, in the south of France, one finds the soil covered with 

 dead Cicadas. La Fontaine's Cigale then could not have found 

 itself " fort depourvue," for the simple reason that it was already 

 dead. 



" Elle alia crier famine 

 Chez la Fourmi, sa voisine, 

 La priant de lui preter 

 Quelque grain pour subsister." 



The ant is carnivorous, and although it likes honey, it has 

 nothing to do with a grain 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 on 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, "La bon la Fontaine," swarm 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 Bufibn 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 Bor- 

 deaux. 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 Tettigoniafraxini, very common in Pro- 

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

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

 above ; the head and thorax are marked or striped with black. 



