24 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



I will dwell no longer on this festival and will become 

 once more the naturalist, anxious to obtain information 

 concerning the private life of the insect. The Green 

 Grasshopper (Locusta viridissima, Lin.) does not appear 

 to be common in my neighborhood. Last year, intending 

 to make a study of this insect and finding my efforts 

 to hunt it fruitless, I was obliged to have recourse to the 

 good offices of a forest-ranger, who sent me a pair of 

 couples from the Lagarde plateau, that bleak district 

 where the beech -tree begins its escalade of the Ventoux. 



Now and then freakish fortune takes it into her head 

 to smile upon the persevering. What was not to be 

 found last year has become almost common this summer. 

 Without leaving my narrow enclosure, I obtain as many 

 Grasshoppers as I could wish. I hear them rustling at 

 night in the green thickets. Let us make the most of the 

 windfall, which perhaps will not occur again. 



In the month of June my treasures are installed, in a 

 sufficient number of couples, under a wire cover stand- 

 ing on a bed of sand in an earthen pan. It is indeed a 

 magnificent insect, pale-green all over, with two whitish 

 stripes running down its sides. Its imposing size, its 

 slim proportions and its great gauze wings make it the 

 most elegant of our Locustidse. I am enraptured with my 

 captives. What will they teach me? We shall see. 

 For the moment, we must feed them. 



I offer the prisoners a leaf of lettuce. They bite into 

 it, certainly, but very sparingly and with a scornful tooth. 

 It soon becomes plain that I am dealing with half-hearted 

 vegetarians. They want something else : they are beasts 



