Social life in the insect world / by J. H. Fabre.

  • Jean-Henri Fabre
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social life in the insect world / by J. H. Fabre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    circumstances for correct knowledge of the subject. Whence, then, arose the errors of his taie ? Less excusably than La Fontaine, the Greek fabulist wrote of the Cigale of the books, instead of interrogating the living Cigale, whose cymbals were resounding on every side ; careless of the real, he followed tradition. He himself echoed a more ancient narrative ; he repeated some legend that had reached him from India, the venerable mother of civilisations. We do not know precisely what story the reed-pen of the Hindoo may hâve confided to writing, in order to show the périls of a life without foresight ; but it is probable that the little animal drama was nearer the truth than the conversation between the Cigale and the Ant. India, the friend of animais, was incapable of such a mistake. Everything seems to suggest that the principal personage of the original fable was not the Cigale of the Midi, but some other créature, an insect if you will, whose manners corresponded to the adopted text. Imported into Greece, after long centuries during which, on the banks of the Indus, it made the wise reflect and the children laugh, the ancient anecdote, perhaps as old as the first piece of advice that a father of a family ever gave in respect of economy, transmitted more or less faithfully from one memory to another, must hâve suffered alteration in its details, as is the fate of ail such legends, which the passage of time adapts to the circumstance of time and place. The Greek, not finding in his country the insect of which the Hindoo spoke, introduced the Cigale, as in Paris, the modem Athens, the Cigale has been replaced by the Grasshopper. The mistake was made ; hence-
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