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 neighbourhood. Last year, intending to make a study of this insect [[286]]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 standing 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 Locustidæ. I am enraptured with my captives. What will they teach me? We shall see. For the moment, we must feed them.

I have here the same difficulty that I had [[287]]with the Decticus. Influenced by the general diet of the Orthoptera,[2] those ruminants of the greenswards, 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 of prey, apparently. But what manner of prey? A lucky chance taught me.

At break of day I was pacing up and down outside my door, when something fell from the nearest plane-tree with a shrill grating sound. I ran up and saw a Grasshopper gutting the belly of an exhausted Cicada. In vain the victim buzzed and waved his limbs: the other did not let go, dipping her head right into the entrails and rooting them out by small mouthfuls.

I knew what I wanted to know: the attack had taken place up above, early in the morning, while the Cicada was asleep; and the plunging of the poor wretch, dissected alive, had made assailant and assailed fall in a [[288]]bundle to the ground. Since then I have repeatedly had occasion to witness similar carnage.

I have even seen the Grasshopper—the height of audacity, this—dart in pursuit of a Cicada in mad flight. Even so does the Sparrow-hawk pursue the Swallow in the sky. But the bird of prey here is inferior to the insect. It attacks a weaker than itself. The Grasshopper, on the other hand, assaults a colossus, much larger than herself and stronger; and nevertheless the result of the unequal fight is not in doubt. The Grasshopper rarely fails with the sharp pliers of her powerful jaws to disembowel her capture, which, being unprovided with weapons, confines itself to crying out and kicking.

The main thing is to retain one’s hold of the prize, which is not difficult in somnolent darkness. Any Cicada encountered by the fierce Locustid on her nocturnal rounds is bound to die a lamentable death. This explains those sudden agonized notes which grate through the woods at late, unseasonable hours, when the cymbals have long been silent. The murderess in her suit of apple-green has pounced on some sleeping Cicada. [[289]]

My boarders’ menu is settled: I will feed them on Cicadæ. They take such a liking to this fare that, in two or three weeks, the floor of the cage is a knacker’s yard strewn with heads and empty thoraces, with torn-off wings and disjointed legs. The belly alone disappears almost entirely. This is the tit-bit, not very substantial, but extremely tasty, it would seem. Here, in fact, in the insect’s crop, the syrup is accumulated, the sugary sap which the Cicada’s gimlet taps from the tender bark. Is it because of this dainty that the prey’s abdomen is preferred to any other morsel? It is quite possible.

I do, in fact, with a view to varying the diet, decide to serve up some very sweet fruits, slices of pear, grape-pips, bits of melon. All this meets with delighted appreciation. The Green Grasshopper resembles the English: she dotes on underdone rumpsteak seasoned with jam.[3] This perhaps is [[290]]why, on catching the Cicada, she first rips up his paunch, which supplies a mixture of flesh and preserves.