are
boiled, and the decoction is administered as medicine. The explanation
which is given of the diuretic properties of the insect is a marvel of
ingenuousness. The Cigale, as every one knows who has tried to catch it,
throws a jet of liquid excrement in one's face as it flies away. It
therefore endows us with its faculties of evacuation. Thus Dioscorides
and his contemporaries must have reasoned; so reasons the peasant of
Provence to-day.

What would you say, worthy neighbours, if you knew of the virtues of the
larva, which is able to mix sufficient mortar with its urine to build a
meteorological station and a shaft connecting with the outer world? Your
powers should equal those of Rabelais' Gargantua, who, seated upon the
towers of Notre Dame, drowned so many thousands of the inquisitive
Parisians.

CHAPTER III

THE SONG OF THE CIGALE

Where I live I can capture five species of Cigale, the two principal
species being the common Cigale and the variety which lives on the
flowering ash. Both of these are widely distributed and are the only
species known to the country folk. The larger of the two is the common
Cigale. Let me briefly describe the mechanism with which it produces its
familiar note.

On the under side of the body of the male, immediately behind the
posterior limbs, are two wide semicircular plates which slightly overlap
one another, the right hand lying over the left hand plate. These are
the shutters, the lids, the dampers of the musical-box. Let us remove
them. To the right and left lie two spacious cavities which are known in
Provencal as the chapels (_li capello_). Together they form the church
(_la gleiso_). Their forward limit is formed by a creamy yellow
membrane, soft and thin; the hinder limit by a dry membrane coloured
like a soap bubble and known in Provencal as the mirror (_mirau_).

The church, the mirrors, and the dampers are commonly regarded as the
organs which produce the cry of the Cigale. Of a singer out of breath
one says that he has broken his mirrors (_a li mirau creba_). The same
phrase is used of a poet without inspiration. Acoustics give the lie to
the popular belief. You may break the mirrors, remove the covers with a
snip of the scissors, and tear the yellow anterior membrane, but these
mutilations do not silence the song of the Cigale; they merely change
its quality and weaken it. The chapels are resonators; they do not
produce the sound, but merely reinforce it by