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Social Life in the Insect World
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Botany & HorticultureInsects & SpidersLawns, Trees, & Shrubs
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Publisher: Jalin Library
Pages: 270
Weight: 0.80
Height: 0.57 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
THE FABLE OF THE CIGALE AND THE ANT
F
ame 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?
Where in the entomological world shall we find a more famous reputation?
Her fame as an impassioned singer, careless of the future, was the subject of
our earliest lessons in repetition. In short, easily remembered lines of verse,
we learned how she was destitute when the winter winds arrived, and how
she went begging for food to the Ant, her neighbour. A poor welcome she
received, the would-be borrower!-a welcome that has become proverbial,
and her chief title to celebrity. The petty malice of the two short lines-
Vous chantiez! j'en suis bien aise, Eh bien, dansez maintenant!
has done more to immortalise the insect than her skill as a musician. You
sang! I am very glad to hear it! Now you can dance! The words lodge in
3 JEAN-HENRI FABRE
the childish memory, never to be forgotten. To most Englishmen-to most
Frenchmen even-the song of the Cigale is unknown, for she dwells in the
country of the olive-tree; but we all know of the treatment she received at
the hands of the Ant. On such trifles does Fame depend! A legend of very
dubious value, its moral as bad as its natural history; a nurse's tale whose
only merit is its brevity; such is the basis of a reputation which will survive
the wreck of centuries no less surely than the tale of Puss-in-Boots and of
Little Red Riding-Hood.
The child is the best guardian of tradition, the great conservative. Custom
and tradition become indestructible when confided to the archives of his
memory. To the child we owe the celebrity of the Cigale, of whose misfor-
tunes he has babbled during his first lessons in recitation. It is he who will
preserve for future generations the absurd nonsense ofwhich the body of the
fable is constructed; the Cigale will always be hungry when the cold comes,
although there were never Cigales in winter; she will always beg alms in the
shape of a few grains of wheat, a diet absolutely incompatible with her deli-
cate capillary tongue; and in desperation she will hunt for flies and grubs,
although she never eats.
Whom shall we hold responsible for these strange mistakes? La Fontaine,
who in most of his fables charms us with his exquisite fineness of observa-
tion, has here been ill-inspired. His earlier subjects he knew down to the
ground: the Fox, the Wolf, the Cat, the Stag, the Crow, the Rat, the Fer-
ret, and so many others, whose actions and manners he describes with a de-
lightful precision of detail. These are inhabitants of his own country; neigh-
bours, fellow-parishioners. Their life, private and public, is lived under his
eyes; but the Cigale is a stranger to the haunts of Jack Rabbit. La Fontaine
had never seen nor heard her. For him the celebrated songstress
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