THE WORKS OF J. H. FABRE
THE LIFE OF THE
GRASSHOPPER
BY
J. HENRI FABRE
Translated by
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS, F.Z.S.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED
LONDON
CONTENTS
PAGE
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE vii
CHAPTER
I THE FABLE OF THE CICADA AND THE ANT 1
II THE CICADA: LEAVING THE BURROW 25
III THE CICADA: THE TRANSFORMATION 42
IV THE CICADA: HIS MUSIC 58
V THE CICADA: THE LAYING AND THE HATCHING OF THE EGGS 82
VI THE MANTIS: HER HUNTING 113
VII THE MANTIS: HER LOVE-MAKING 137
VIII THE MANTIS: HER NEST 147
IX THE MANTIS: HER HATCHING 170
X THE EMPUSA 191
XI THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS: HIS HABITS 211
XII THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS: THE LAYING AND THE
HATCHING OF THE EGGS 231
XIII THE WHITE-FACED DECTICUS: THE INSTRUMENT OF SOUND 246
XIV THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER 275
XV THE CRICKET: THE BURROW; THE EGG 300
XVI THE CRICKET: THE SONG; THE PAIRING 327
XVII THE LOCUSTS: THEIR FUNCTION; THEIR ORGAN OF SOUND 354
XVIII THE LOCUSTS: THEIR EGGS 378
XIX THE LOCUSTS: THE LAST MOULT 401
XX THE FOAMY CICADELLA 424
INDEX 447
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I have ventured in the present volume to gather together, under the
somewhat loose and inaccurate title of The Life of the Grasshopper, the
essays scattered over the Souvenirs entomologiques that treat of
Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts and such insects as the Cicada, or
Cigale, the Mantis and the Cuckoo-spit, or, to adopt the author’s
happier and more euphonious term, the Foamy Cicadella. They exhaust the
number of the orthopterous and homopterous insects discussed by Henri
Fabre.
Chapters I. to VIII., XV., XVI. and XIX. have already appeared, in
certain cases under different titles and partly in an abbreviated form,
in an interesting miscellany extracted from the Souvenirs, translated
by Mr. Bernard Miall and published by the Century Company. This volume,
Social Life in the Insect World, is illustrated with admirable
photographs of insects, taken from life, and deserves a prominent place
on the shelves of every lover of Fabre’s works.
At the moment of writing, the only one of the following essays that has
been published before, in my translation, is the first of the three
describing the White-faced Decticus, which appeared, in the summer of
last year, in the English Review.
Miss Frances Rodwell has again lent me the most valuable assistance in
preparing this volume; and I am indebted also to Mr. Osman Edwards and
Mr. Stephen McKenna for their graceful rhymed versions of the
occasional lyrics that adorn it.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
Chelsea, 1917.
CHAPTER I
THE FABLE OF THE CICADA AND THE ANT
Fame is built up mainly of legend; in the animal world, as in the world
of men, the story takes precedence of history. Insects in particular,
whether they attract our attention in this way or in that, have their
fair share in a folk-lore which pays but little regard to truth.
For instance, who does not know the Cicada, at least by name? Where, in
the entomological world, can we find a renown that equals hers? Her
reputation as an inveterate singer, who takes no thought for the
future, has formed a subject for our earliest exercises in repetition.
In verses that are very easily learnt, she is shown to us, when the
bitter winds begin to blow, quite destitute and hurrying to her
neighbour, the Ant, to announce her hunger. The would-be borrower meets
with a poor welcome and with a reply which has remained proverbial and
is the chief cause of the little creature’s fame. Those two short
lines,
Vous chantiez! J’en suis bien en aise.
Eh bien, dansez maintenant, [1]
with their petty malice, have done more for the Cicada’s celebrity than
all her talent as a musician. They enter the child’s mind like a wedge
and never leave it.
To most of us, the Cicada’s song is unknown, for she dwells in the land
of the olive-trees; but we all, big and little, have heard of the snub
which she received from the Ant. See how reputations are made! A story
of very doubtful value, offending as much against morality as against
natural history; a nursery-tale whose only merit lies in its brevity:
there we have the origin of a renown which will tower over the ruins of
the centuries like Hop-o’-my-Thumb’s boots and Little Red-Riding-Hood’s
basket.
The child is essentially conservative. Custom and traditions become
indestructible once they are confided to the archives of his memory. We
owe to him the celebrity of the Cicada, whose woes he stammered in his
first attempts at recitation. He preserves for us the glaring
absurdities that are part and parcel of the fable: the Cicada will
always be hungry when the cold comes, though there are no Cicadæ left
in the winter; she will always beg for the alms of a few grains of
wheat, a food quite out of keeping with her delicate sucker; the
supplicant is supposed to hunt for Flies and grubs, she who never eats!
Whom are we to hold responsible for these curious blunders? La
Fontaine, [2] who charms us in most of his fables with his exquisite
delicacy of observation, is very ill-inspired in this case. He knows
thoroughly his common subjects, the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Goat,
the Crow, the Rat, the Weasel and many others, whose sayings and doings
he describes to us with delightful precision of detail. They are local
characters, neighbours, housemates of his. Their public and private
life is spent under his eyes; but, where Jack Rabbit gambols, the
Cicada is an entire stranger: La Fontaine never heard of her, never saw
her. To him the famous singer is undoubtedly a Grasshopper.
Grandville, [3] whose drawings have the same delicious spice of malice
as the text itself, falls into the same error. In his illustration, we
see the Ant arrayed like an industrious housewife. Standing on her
threshold, beside great sacks of wheat, she turns a contemptuous back
on the borrower, who is holding out her foot, I beg pardon, her hand.
The second figure wears a great cartwheel hat, with a guitar under her
arm and her skirt plastered to her legs by the wind, and is the perfect
picture of a Grasshopper. Grandville no more than La Fontaine suspected
the real appearance of the Cicada; he reproduced magnificently the
general mistake.
For the rest, La Fontaine, in his poor little story, only echoes
another fabulist. The legend of the Cicada’s sorry welcome by the Ant
is as old as selfishness, that is to say, as old as the world. The
children of Athens, going to school with their esparto-grass baskets
crammed with figs and olives, were already mumbling it as a piece for
recitation:
“In winter,” said they, “the Ants dry their wet provisions in the sun.
Up comes a hungry Cicada begging. She asks for a few grains. The greedy
hoarders reply, ‘You used to sing in summer; now dance in winter.’” [4]
This, although a little more baldly put, is precisely La Fontaine’s
theme and is contrary to all sound knowledge.
Nevertheless the fable comes to us from Greece, which is preeminently
the land of olive-trees and Cicadæ. Was Æsop really the author, as
tradition pretends? It is doubtful. Nor does it matter, after all: the
narrator is a Greek and a fellow-countryman of the Cicada, whom he must
know well enough. My village does not contain a peasant so ignorant as
to be unaware of the absolute lack of Cicadæ in winter; every tiller of
the soil is familiar with the insect’s primary state, the larva, which
he turns over with his spade as often as he has occasion to bank up the
olive-trees at the approach of the cold weather; he knows, from seeing
it a thousand times along the paths, how this grub leaves the ground
through a round pit of its own making, how it fastens on to some twig,
splits its back, divests itself of its skin, now drier than shrivelled
parchment, and turns into the Cicada, pale grass-green at first, soon
to be succeeded by brown.
The Attic peasant was no fool either: he had remarked that which cannot
escape the least observant eye; he also knew what my rustic neighbours
know so well. The poet, whoever he may have been, who invented the
fable was writing under the best conditions for knowing all about these
things. Then whence did the blunders in his story arise?
The Greek fabulist had less excuse than La Fontaine for portraying the
Cicada of the books instead of going to the actual Cicada, whose
cymbals were echoing at his side; heedless of the real, he followed
tradition. He himself was but echoing a more ancient scribe; he was
repeating some legend handed down from India, the venerable mother of
civilizations. Without knowing exactly the story which the Hindu’s reed
had put in writing to show the danger of a life led without foresight,
we are entitled to believe that the little dialogue set down was nearer
to the truth than the conversation between the Cicada and the Ant.
India, the great lover of animals, was incapable of committing such a
mistake. Everything seems to tell us that the leading figure in the
original fable was not our Cicada but rather some other creature, an
insect if you will, whose habits corresponded fittingly with the text
adopted.
Imported into Greece, after serving for centuries to make the wise
reflect and to amuse the children on the banks of the Indus, the
ancient story, perhaps as old as the first piece of economical advice
vouchsafed by Paterfamilias and handed down more or less faithfully
from memory to memory, must have undergone an alteration in its
details, as do all legends which the course of the ages adapts to
circumstances of time and place.
The Greek, not possessing in his fields the insect of which the Hindu
spoke, dragged in, as the nearest thing to it, the Cicada, even as in
Paris, the modern Athens, the Cicada is replaced by the Grasshopper.
The mischief was done. Henceforth ineradicable, since it has been
confided to the memory of childhood, the mistake will prevail against
an obvious truth.
Let us try to rehabilitate the singer slandered by the fable. He is, I
hasten to admit, an importunate neighbour. Every summer he comes and
settles in his hundreds outside my door, attracted by the greenery of
two tall plane-trees; and here, from sunrise to sunset, the rasping of
his harsh symphony goes through my head. Amid this deafening concert,
thought is impossible; one’s ideas reel and whirl, are incapable of
concentrating. When I have not profited by the early hours of the
morning, my day is lost.
Oh, little demon, plague of my dwelling which I should like to have so
peaceful, they say that the Athenians used to rear you in a cage to
enjoy your singing at their ease! One we could do with, perhaps, during
the drowsy hour of digestion; but hundreds at a time, all rattling and
drumming in our ears when we are trying to collect our thoughts, that
is sheer torture! You say that you were here first, do you? Before I
came, you were in undisputed possession of the two plane-trees; and it
is I who am the intruder there. I agree. Nevertheless, muffle your
drums, moderate your arpeggios, for the sake of your biographer!
Truth will have none of the absurd rigmarole which we find in the
fable. That there are sometimes relations between the Cicada and the
Ant is most certain; only, these relations are the converse of what we
are told. They are not made on the initiative of the Cicada, who is
never dependent on the aid of others for his living; they come from the
Ant, a greedy spoiler, who monopolizes every edible thing for her
granaries. At no time does the Cicada go crying famine at the doors of
the Ant-hills, promising honestly to repay principal and interest; on
the contrary, it is the Ant who, driven by hunger, begs and entreats
the singer. Entreats, do I say? Borrowing and repaying form no part of
the pillager’s habits. She despoils the Cicada, brazenly robs him of
his possessions. Let us describe this theft, a curious point in natural
history and, as yet, unknown.
In July, during the stifling heat of the afternoon, when the insect
populace, parched with thirst, vainly wanders around the limp and
withered flowers in search of refreshment, the Cicada laughs at the
general need. With that delicate gimlet, his rostrum, he broaches a
cask in his inexhaustible cellar. Sitting, always singing, on the
branch of a shrub, he bores through the firm, smooth bark swollen with
sap ripened by the sun. Driving his sucker through the bung-hole, he
drinks luxuriously, motionless and rapt in contemplation, absorbed in
the charms of syrup and song.
Watch him for a little while. We shall perhaps witness unexpected
tribulation. There are many thirsty ones prowling around, in fact; they
discover the well betrayed by the sap that oozes from the margin. They
hasten up, at first with some discretion, confining themselves to
licking the fluid as it exudes. I see gathering around the mellifluous
puncture Wasps, Flies, Earwigs, Sphex-wasps, [5] Pompili, [6]
Rose-chafers [7] and, above all, Ants.
The smallest, in order to reach the well, slip under the abdomen of the
Cicada, who good-naturedly raises himself on his legs and leaves a free
passage for the intruders; the larger ones, unable to stand still for
impatience, quickly snatch a sip, retreat, take a walk on the
neighbouring branches and then return and show greater enterprise. The
coveting becomes more eager; the discreet ones of a moment ago develop
into turbulent aggressors, ready to chase away from the spring the
well-sinker who caused it to gush forth.
In this brigandage, the worst offenders are the Ants. I have seen them
nibbling at the ends of the Cicada’s legs; I have caught them tugging
at the tips of his wings, climbing on his back, tickling his antennæ.
One, greatly daring, went to the length, before my eyes, of catching
hold of his sucker and trying to pull it out.
Thus worried by these pigmies and losing all patience, the giant ends
by abandoning the well. He flees, spraying the robbers with his urine
as he goes. What cares the Ant for this expression of supreme contempt!
Her object is attained. She is now the mistress of the spring, which
dries up only too soon when the pump that made it flow ceases to work.
There is little of it, but that little is exquisite. It is so much to
the good, enabling her to wait for another draught, acquired in the
same fashion, as soon as the occasion presents itself.
You see, the actual facts entirely reverse the parts assigned in the
fable. The hardened beggar, who does not shrink from theft, is the Ant;
the industrious artisan, gladly sharing his possessions with the
sufferer, is the Cicada. I will mention one more detail; and the
reversal of characters will stand out even more clearly. After five or
six weeks of wassail, which is a long space of time, the singer,
exhausted by the strain of life, drops from the tree. The sun dries up
the body; the feet of the passers-by crush it. The Ant, always a
highway-robber in search of spoil, comes upon it. She cuts up the rich
dish, dissects it, carves it and reduces it to morsels which go to
swell her hoard of provisions. It is not unusual to see a dying Cicada,
with his wing still quivering in the dust, drawn and quartered by a
gang of knackers. He is quite black with them. After this cannibalistic
proceeding, there is no question as to the true relations between the
two insects.
The ancients held the Cicada in high favour. Anacreon, the Greek
Béranger, [8] devoted an ode to singing his praises in curiously
exaggerated language:
“Thou art almost like unto the gods,” says he.
The reasons which he gives for this apotheosis are none of the best.
They consist of these three privileges: γηγενής, απαθής, ὰναιμόσαρκε;
earthborn, insensible to pain, bloodless. Let us not start reproaching
the poet for these blunders, which were generally believed at the time
and perpetuated for very long after, until the observer’s searching
eyes were opened. Besides, it does not do to look so closely at verses
whose chief merit lies in harmony and rhythm.
Even in our own days, the Provençal poets, who are at least as familiar
with the Cicada as Anacreon was, are not so very careful of the truth
in celebrating the insect which they take as an emblem. One of my
friends, a fervent observer and a scrupulous realist, escapes this
reproach. He has authorized me to take from his unpublished verse the
following Provençal ballad, which depicts the relations between the
Cicada and the Ant with strictly scientific accuracy. I leave to him
the responsibility for his poetic images and his moral views, delicate
flowers outside my province as a naturalist; but I can vouch for the
truth of his story, which tallies with what I see every summer on the
lilac-trees in my garden.
LA CIGALO E LA FOURNIGO
I
Jour de Dièu, queto caud! Bèu tèms pèr la cigalo
Que, trefoulido, se regalo
D’uno raisso de fiò; bèu tèms pèr la meissoun.
Dins lis erso d’or, lou segaire,
Ren plega, pitre au vent, rustico e canto gaire:
Dins soun gousiè, la set estranglo la cansoun.
Tèms benesi pèr tu. Dounc, ardit! cigaleto,
Fai-lei brusi, ti chimbaleto,
E brandusso lou ventre à creba ti mirau.
L’Ome enterin mando la daio,
Que vai balin-balan de longo e que dardaio
L’uiau de soun acié sus li rous espigau.
Plèn d’aigo pèr la péiro e tampouna d’erbiho
Lou coufié sus l’anco pendiho.
Se la péiro es au frès dins soun estui de bos
E se de longo es abèurado,
L’Ome barbelo au fiò d’aqueli souleiado
Que fan bouli de fes la mesoulo dis os.
Tu, Cigalo, as un biais pèr la set: dins la rusco
Tendro e jutouso d’uno busco,
L’aguio de toun bè cabusso e cavo un pous.
Lou sirò monto pèr la draio.
T’amourres à la fon melicouso que raio,
E dòu sourgènt sucra bèves lou teta-dous.
Mai pas toujour en pas, oh! que nàni: de laire,
Vesin, vesino o barrulaire,
T’an vist cava lou pous. An set; vènon, doulènt,
Te prène un degout pèr si tasso.
Mesfiso-te, ma bello: aqueli curo-biasso,
Umble d’abord, soun lèu de gusas insoulènt.
Quiston un chicouloun de rèn; pièi de ti resto
Soun plus countènt, ausson la testo
E volon tout. L’auran. Sis arpioun en rastèu
Te gatihoun lou bout de l’alo.
Sus ta larjo esquinasso es un mounto-davalo;
T’aganton pèr lou bè, li bano, lis artèu;
Tiron d’eici, d’eilà. L’impaciènci te gagno.
Pst! pst! d’un giscle de pissagno
Aspèrges l’assemblado e quites lou ramèu.
T’en vas bèn liuen de la racaio,
Que t’a rauba lou pous, e ris, e se gougaio,
E se lipo li brego enviscado de mèu.
Or d’aqueli boumian abèura sens fatigo,
Lou mai tihous es la fournigo.
Mousco, cabrian, guespo e tavan embana,
Espeloufi de touto meno,
Costo-en-long qu’à toun pous lou souleias ameno,
N’an pas soun testardige à te faire enana.
Pèr t’esquicha l’artèu, te coutiga lou mourre,
Te pessuga lou nas, pèr courre
A l’oumbro de toun ventre, osco! degun la vau.
Lou marrit-péu prend pèr escalo
Uno patto e te monto, ardido, sus lis alo,
E s’espasso, insoulènto, e vai d’amont, d’avau.
II
Aro veici qu’es pas de crèire.
Ancian tèms, nous dison li rèire,
Un jour d’ivèr, la fam te prenguè. Lou front bas
E d’escoundoun anères vèire,
Dins si grand magasin, la fournigo, eilàbas.
L’endrudido au soulèu secavo,
Avans de lis escoundre en cavo,
Si blad qu’aviè mousi l’eigagno de la niue.
Quand èron lest lis ensacavo.
Tu survènes alor, emè de plour is iue.
Ié disés: “Fai bèn fre; l’aurasso
D’un caire à l’autre me tirasso
Avanido de fam. A toun riche mouloun
Leisso-me prène pèr ma biasso.
Te lou rendrai segur au bèu tèms di meloun.
“Presto-me un pau de gran.” Mai, bouto,
Se cresès que l’autro, t’escouto,
T’enganes. Di gros sa, rèn de rèn sara tièu.
“Vai-t’en plus liuen rascia de bouto;
Crebo de fam l’iver, tu que cantes l’estièu”
Ansin charro la fablo antico
Pèr nous counséia la pratico
Di sarro-piastro, urous de nousa li courdoun
De si bourso.—Que la coulico
Rousiguè la tripaio en aqueli coudoun!
Me fai susa, lou fabulisto,
Quand dis que l’ivèr vas en quisto
De mousco, verme, gran, tu que manges jamai.
De blad! Que n’en fariès, ma fisto!
As ta fon melicouso e demandes rèn mai.
Que t’enchau l’ivèr! Ta famiho
A la sousto en terro soumiho,
E tu dormes la som que n’a ges de revèi;
Toun cadabre toumbo en douliho.
Un jour, en tafurant, la fournigo lou vèi.
De ta magro péu dessecado
La marriasso fai becado;
Te curo lou perus, te chapouto à moucèu,
T’encafourno pèr car-salado,
Requisto prouvisioun, l’ivèr, en tèms de nèu.
III
Vaqui l’istori veritablo
Bèn liuen dòu conte de la fablo.
Que n’en pensas, canèu de sort!
—O ramaissaire de dardeno,
Det croucu, boumbudo bedeno
Que gouvernas lou mounde emé lou coffre-fort,
Fasès courre lou bru, canaio
Que l’artisto jamai travaio
E dèu pati, lou bedigas.
Teisas-vous dounc: quand di lambrusco
La Cigalo a cava la rusco,
Raubas soun bèure, e pièi, morto, la rousigas.
Thus speaks my friend, in his expressive Provençal tongue,
rehabilitating the Cicada, who has been so grossly libelled by the
fabulist.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I am indebted for the following translation to the felicitous pen of my
friend Mr. Osman Edwards:
THE CICADA AND THE ANT
I
Ye gods, what heat! Cicada thrills
With mad delight when fairy rills
Submerge the corn in waves of gold,
When, with bowed back and toil untold,
His blade the songless reaper plies,
For in dry throats song gasps and dies.
This hour is thine: then, loud and clear,
Thy cymbals clash, Cicada dear,
Let mirrors crack, let belly writhe!
Behold! The man yet darts his scythe,
Whose glitter lifts and drops again
A lightning-flash on ruddy grain.
With grass and water well supplied,
His whetstone dangles at his side;
The whetstone in its case of wood
Has moisture for each thirsty mood;
But he, poor fellow, pants and moans,
The marrow boiling in his bones.
Dost thirst, Cicada? Never mind!
Deep in a young bough’s tender rind
Thy sharp proboscis bores a well,
Whence, narrowly, sweet juices swell.
Ah, soon what honied joys are thine
To quaff a vintage so divine!
In peace? Not always.... There’s a band
Of roving thieves (or close at hand)
Who watched thee draw the nectar up
And beg one drop with doleful cup.
Beware, my love! They humbly crave;
Soon each will prove a saucy knave.
The merest sip?—’Tis set aside.
What’s left?—They are not satisfied.
All must be theirs, who rudely fling
A rakish claw athwart thy wing;
Next on thy back swarm up and down,
From tip to toe, from tail to crown.
On every side they fuss and fret,
Provoking an impatient jet;
Thou leavest soon the sprinkled rind,
Its robber-rascals, far behind;
Thy well purloined, each grins and skips
And licks the honey from her lips.
No tireless, quenchless mendicant
Is so persistent as the Ant;
Wasps, Beetles, Hornets, Drones and Flies,
Sharpers of every sort and size,
Loafers, intent on ousting thee,
All are less obstinate than she.
To pinch thy toe, thy nose to tweak,
To tickle face and loins, to sneak
Beneath thy belly, who so bold?
Give her the tiniest foothold,
The slut will march from side to side
Across thy wings in shameless pride.
II
Now here’s a story that is told,
Incredible, by men of old:
Once starving on a winter’s day
By secret, miserable way
Thou soughtest out the Ant and found
Her spacious warehouse underground.
That rich possessor in the sun
Was busy drying, one by one,
Her treasures, moist with the night’s dew,
Before she buried them from view
In corn-sacks of sufficient size;
Then didst thou sue with tearful eyes,
Saying, “Alas! This deadly breeze
Pursues me everywhere; I freeze
With hunger; let me fill (no more!)
My wallet from that copious store;
Next year, when melons are full-blown,
Be sure I shall repay the loan!
“Lend me a little corn!”—Absurd!
Of course she will not hear a word;
Thou wilt not win, for all thy pain,
From bulging sacks a single grain.
“Be off and scrape the binns!” she cries:
“Who sang in June, in winter dies.”
Thus doth the ancient tail impart
Fit moral for a miser’s heart;
Bids him all charity forget
And draw his purse-strings tighter yet.
May colic chase such scurvy knaves
With pangs internal to their graves!
A sorry fabulist, indeed,
Who fancied that the winter’s need
Would drive thee to subsist, forlorn,
On Flies, on grubs, on grains of corn;
No need was ever thine of those,
For whom the honied fountain flows.
What matters winter? All thy kin
Beneath the earth are gathered in;
Thou sleepest with unwaking heart,
While the frail body falls apart
In rags that unregarded lie,
Save by the Ant’s rapacious eye.
She, groping greedily, one day
Makes of thy shrivelled corpse her prey;
Dissects the trunk, gnaws limb from limb,
Concocts, according to her whim,
A salad such grim housewives know,
A tit-bit saved for hours of snow.
III
That, gentlemen, is truly told,
Unlike the fairy-tale of old;
But finds it favour in his sight,
Who grabs at farthings, day and night?
Pot-bellied, crooked-fingered, he
Would rule the world with L.S.D.
Such riff-raff spread the vulgar view
That “artists are a lazy crew,”
That “fools must suffer.” Silent be!
When the Cicada taps the tree,
You steal his drink; when life has fled,
You basely batten on the dead.