oncerning 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 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
Locustidae. I am enraptured with my captives. What will they teach me?
We shall see. For the moment, we must feed them.

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 a struggling
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 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