When laid naked on another leaf, she brandishes the pointed tip of her little round paunch. This at once betrays the curious machine which we shall see at work presently. When older and still operating under the cover of its foam, the little thing becomes a nymph, turns green in colour and gives itself stumps of wings fixed scarfwise on its sides. From underneath its blunted head there projects, when it is working, a little gimlet, a beak similar to that of the Cicadæ.
In its adult form the insect is, in fact, a sort of very small-sized Cicada, for which reason the entomologist capable of shaking off the trammels of nonsensical nomenclature calls it simply the Foamy Cicadella. For this euphonic name, the diminutive of Cicada, the others have substituted that horrible word Aphrophora. Orthodox science says, Aphrophora spumaria, meaning Foamy Foambearer. The ear is none the better for this improvement. Let us content ourselves with Cicadella, which respects the tympanum and does not reduplicate the foam. [[427]]
I have consulted my few books as to the habits of the Cicadella. They tell me that she punctures plants and makes the sap exude in foamy flakes. Under this cover, the insect lives sheltered from the heat. A work recently compiled has one curious piece of information: it tells me that I must get up early in the morning, inspect my crops, pick any twig with foam on it and at once plunge it into a cauldron of boiling water.
Oh, my poor Cicadella, this is a bad look-out! The author does not do things by halves. I see him rising before the dawn, lighting a stove on wheels and pushing his infernal contrivance through the midst of his lucern, his clover and his peas, to boil you on the spot. He will have his work cut out for him. I remember a certain patch of sainfoin of which almost every stalk had its foam-flakes. Had the stewing-process been necessary, one might just as well have reaped the field and turned the whole crop into herb-tea.
Why these violent measures? Are you so very dangerous to the harvest, my pretty little Cicada? They accuse you of draining the plant which you attack. Upon my word, they are right: you drain it almost as dry as [[428]]the Flea does the Dog. But to touch another’s grass—you know it: doesn’t the fable say so?—is a heinous crime, an offence which can be punished by nothing less drastic than boiling water.
Let us waste no more time on these agricultural entomologists with their murderous designs. To hear them talk, one would think that the insect has no right to live. Incapable of behaving like a ferocious landowner who becomes filled with thoughts of massacre at the sight of a maggoty plum, I, more kindly, abandon my few rows of peas and beans to the Cicadella: she will leave me my share, I am convinced.
Besides, the insignificant ones of the earth are not the least rich in talent, in an originality of invention which will teach us much concerning the infinite variety of instinct. The Cicadella, in particular, possesses her recipes for aerated waters. Let us ask her by what process she succeeds in giving such a fine head of froth to her product, for the books that talk about boiling cauldrons and Cuckoo-spit are silent on this subject, the only one worthy of narration.
The foamy mass has no very definite shape and is hardly larger than a hazel-nut. It is [[429]]remarkably persistent even when the insect is not working at it any longer. Deprived of its manufacturer, who would not fail to keep it going, and placed on a watch-glass, it lasts for more than twenty-four hours without evaporating or losing its bubbles. This persistency is striking, compared with the rapidity with which soapsuds, for instance, disappear.
Prolonged duration of the foam is necessary to the Cicadella, who would exhaust herself in the constant renewal of her products if her work were ordinary froth. Once the effervescent covering is obtained, it is essential that the insect should rest for a time, with no other task than to drink its fill and grow. And so the moisture converted into froth possesses a certain stickiness, conducive to longevity. It is slightly oily and trickles under one’s finger like a weak solution of gum.
The bubbles are small and even, being all of the same dimensions. You can see that they have been scrupulously gauged, one by one; you suspect the presence of a graduated tube. Like our chemists and druggists, the insect must have its drop-measures.