



a 110 THE INSECT WORLD 
| 

| November or of December. But at this season of the year the 
a 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 dépourvue,” for the simple reason that’ it was already 
dead. 







‘“‘ Hille alla crier famine 
Chez la Fourmi, sa voisine, 
j 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 ou de vermisseau,”’ 











never dreamt of such victuals, for it lives entirely on the sap of 
bn 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 | 
nye of animals are nearly always represented as exactly the contrary| 
i| 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 Réaumur, which had not then been | 
written ; but had he not the book of Nae ? 
a 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 Réaumur 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 Fontainbleau, | 
occasionally in La Brie. It is of a grey yellow below, black | 
above ; the head and thorax are marked or striped with black. 


