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Updated: June 3, 2025
I will give one instance of rustic natural history. Are you afflicted with any kidney trouble, or are you swollen with dropsy, or have you need of some powerful diuretic? The village pharmacopoeia is unanimous in recommending the Cigale as a sovereign remedy. The insects in the adult form are collected in summer.
Fame is the daughter of Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this reason or that, it is given a place in those legends of the people whose last care is truth. For example, who is there that does not, at least by hearsay, know the Cigale?
I obtained an insight into this tragedy in the following manner: I was walking up and down before my door at daybreak when something fell from the neighbouring plane-tree uttering shrill squeaks. I ran to see what it was. I found a green grasshopper eviscerating a struggling Cigale.
Moreover, I shall go gently in the matter of irrigation, giving only just enough water to save the plants from perishing. When all is in order, and when the wheat is beginning to shoot, I place six young larvæ of the Cigale on the surface of the soil.
From time to time he will deliberately and meditatively descend upon the plane-trees from the neighbouring roof and snatch up the singer, who squeaks despairingly. A few blows of the beak and the Cigale is cut into quarters, delicious morsels for the nestlings. But how often does the bird return without his prey!
I will call it simply the primary larva, as I have done in the case of the Meloides, the Leucospis, and the Anthrax. The form of the primary larva of the Cigale is eminently adapted to its conditions and facilitates its escape. The tunnel in which the egg is hatched is very narrow, leaving only just room for passage.
She was merely beautiful and irresponsible a typical cigale of the stage lovable and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to themselves, husband and wife might ultimately have found the road to happiness across the bridge of their great love for one another. But such freedom was denied them.
Perhaps the shock of reversing the pot detached them. It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches; as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the first sip?
For some months yet and even during the winter you will often find these forsaken skins hanging from the twigs in the precise attitude assumed by the larva at the moment of metamorphosis. They are of a horny texture, not unlike dry parchment, and do not readily decay. I could gather some wonderful information regarding the Cigale were I to listen to all that my neighbours, the peasants, tell me.
It seemed as if every blade of grass must hide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far and near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen. From their station on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the one hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretz itself in the middle, a handful of roofs.
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