As I in cradle sleeping lay,
A Cavalletta blessed me there,
In answer to my mother’s prayer.”[[34]]
We are not told what happens to the Cavalletta that has been tied up, after “the charm’s wound up.” The proper thing for the mother to do would certainly be to let it go, but I can’t help thinking that what she really does do is to put her foot on it, under the idea that only that can make the thing quite certain. That would be so like the peasantry—of any country.
CHAPTER X
Cicadas in England—A blower of bubbles—The prolific Aphis—A nice calculation—Scientific curiosity—Dragon-fly armies—The son of the south-west wind.
IT is generally understood that there are no cicadas or tettixes in England, and this—with a reservation in favour of a single species residing in the New Forest—is roundly asserted in various entomological works of authority. Since, however, Mr. George Bowdler Buckton, F.R.S., has written a monograph of the British Cicadæ, or Tettigidæ, in two volumes, each of which has a number of plates giving figures of the various species, all with their Latin names, there would seem to be a conflict of learned opinion; and I, for my part—since one of these species has relations with a nice little parasite which I should like to describe—am of opinion, after profound investigation and impartial weighing of the evidence on both sides, that Mr. Buckton is right. What strikes one at first sight as curious is that numbers of creatures, as large sometimes as humble bees, or larger, and of very striking appearance—often quite brilliantly coloured—should for so long have escaped observation; for certainly one has never seen them oneself, and, on making inquiries, one soon finds that nobody else has. But there is an explanation of this seeming miracle, and that of a not very satisfactory nature. One may have noticed, whilst going through the plates, that in the neighbourhood of each striking figure there are two little irrelevant-looking black lines, drawn soft and fine, very unobtrusive, looking as though they wished to elude observation; and gradually it begins to dawn upon you that these lines represent the real size in linear measurement of the very salient, outré-looking creature you are looking at. This, then, is the key to the mystery. England is full of cicadas, but they are all so small that nobody can see them—at least without taking some trouble. So our poets have been silent, our philosophers have made no reflections, and our ploughmen, to this day, are without a proper objective for those appreciative perceptions of life around them which, if it only existed, there might be some evidence of their possessing. Our aristocracy too, or old county families, have never been able to “think gold of themselves,” as the saying is, on account of their golden tettix-pins, though the feeling itself has not been entirely denied them. In a word, our national character has been uninfluenced by cicadas, and, on this, two questions arise: first—for it is no use to start on an assumption—whether faults exist in it, and then, if they do, whether all or any of them are due to this cause. But such matters are for the historian to deal with, and would be out of place in the pages of a work like this.
Though cicadas are so small in England—whilst their voices, if they have any, as there seems no particular reason to doubt, are too attenuated to be audible to our human ears—yet they are not quite invisible. When seen, however, they are known by some other name, such as frog-hoppers, tree-hoppers, or the like. Some of these, in their larval stage, which much resembles the adult, take a great deal of pains to conceal themselves, though in this they have another reason than that of wishing to elude observation. Our common cuckoo-spit is a good instance of this, and also of how a wrong explanation of a common and easily observed phenomenon may for a long time be given, not only in popular works, but also in scientific text-books or monographs, or within the supposedly up-to-date pages of various encyclopædias. The cuckoo-spit, as everyone knows, sits in the midst of a little bower of froth (allied to that other of bliss perhaps) which, on being examined, resolves itself into an accumulation of bubbles, having a somewhat sticky consistency. We had always been told—and still are now very often, though the contrary has been well made out—that these bubbles proceeded from the insect itself, after the manner of any other secretion. But this is not the case. The secretion here is only a clear fluid, and into this the insect afterwards blows bubbles by a mechanical process, and through the addition of air. It is Professor E. S. Morse who, in the pages of Appleton’s Popular Scientific Monthly,[[35]] has thus revolutionised all our ideas on this subject. His account is as follows: “The so-called frog-spittle or cuckoo-spit appears as little flecks of froth on grass, buttercups, and many other plants during the early summer. Immersed in this froth is found a little green insect, sometimes two or three of them concealed by the same moist covering. This little creature represents the early stage of an insect which, in its full growth, still lives upon grass, and is easily recognised by its triangular shape and its ability of jumping like a grasshopper.”