THE CICADA: THE TRANSFORMATION

The Life of the Grasshopper by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE CICADA: THE TRANSFORMATION

CHAPTER III. THE CICADA: THE TRANSFORMATION

The exit-gate is passed and left wide open, like a hole made with a large gimlet. For some time the larva wanders about the neighbourhood, looking for some aerial support, a tiny bush, a tuft of thyme, a blade of grass or the twig of a shrub. It finds it, climbs up and, head upwards, clings to it firmly with the claws of the fore-feet, which close and do not let go again. The other legs take part in sustaining it, if the position of the branch make this possible; if not, the two claws suffice. There follows a moment of rest to allow the supporting arms to stiffen into an immovable grip.

First, the mesothorax splits along the middle of the back. The edges of the slit separate slowly and reveal the pale-green colour of the insect. Almost immediately afterwards, the prothorax splits also. The longitudinal fissure reaches the back of the [43]head above and the metathorax below, without spreading farther. The wrapper of the skull breaks crosswise, in front of the eyes; and the red stemmata appear. The green portion uncovered by these ruptures swells and protrudes over the whole of the mesothorax. We see slow palpitations, alternate contractions and distensions due to the ebb and flow of the blood. This hernia, working at first out of sight, is the wedge that made the cuirass split along two crossed lines of least resistance.

The skinning-operation makes rapid progress. Soon the head is free. Then the rostrum and the front legs gradually leave their sheaths. The body is horizontal, with the ventral surface turned upwards. Under the wide-open carapace appear the hinder legs, the last to be released. The wings are distended with moisture. They are still rumpled and look like stumps bent into a bow. This first phase of the transformation has taken but ten minutes.

There remains the second, which lasts longer. The whole of the insect is free, except the tip of the abdomen, which is still contained in its scabbard. The cast skin continues to grip the twig. Stiffening as the [44]result of quick desiccation, it preserves without change the attitude which it had at the start. It forms the pivot for what is about to follow.

Fixed to his slough by the tip of the abdomen, which is not yet extracted, the Cicada turns over perpendicularly, head downwards. He is pale-green, tinged with yellow. The wings, until now compressed into thick stumps, straighten out, unfurl, spread under the rush of the liquid with which they are gorged. When this slow and delicate operation is ended, the Cicada, with an almost imperceptible movement, draws himself up by sheer strength of loin and resumes a normal position, head upwards. The fore-legs hook on to the empty skin; and at last the tip of the belly is drawn from its sheath. The extraction is over. The work has required half an hour altogether.

Here is the whole insect, freed from its mask, but how different from what it will be presently! The wings are heavy, moist, transparent, with their veins a light green. The prothorax and mesothorax are barely tinged with brown. All the rest of the body is pale-green, whitish in places. It must [45]bathe in air and sunshine for a long time before strength and colour can come to its frail body. About two hours pass without producing any noticeable change. Hanging to his cast skin by his fore-claws only, the Cicada sways at the least breath of air, still feeble and still green. At last the brown tinge appears, becomes more marked and is soon general. Half an hour has effected the change of colour. Slung from the suspension-twig at nine o’clock in the morning, the Cicada flies away, before my eyes, at half-past twelve.

The cast skin remains, intact, save for its fissure, and so firmly fastened that the rough weather of autumn does not always succeed in bringing it to the ground. For some months yet, even during the winter, one often meets old skins hanging in the bushes in the exact position adopted by the larva at the moment of its transformation. Their horny nature, something like dry parchment, ensures a long existence for these relics.

Let us hark back for a moment to the gymnastic feat which enables the Cicada to leave his scabbard. At first retained by the tip of the abdomen, which is the last part to remain in its case, the Cicada turns over [46]perpendicularly, head downwards. This somersault allows him to free his wings and legs, after the head and chest have already made their appearance by cracking the armour under the pressure of a hernia. Now comes the time to free the end of the abdomen, the pivot of this inverted attitude. For this purpose, the insect, with a laborious movement of its back, draws itself up, brings its head to the top again and hooks itself with its fore-claws to the cast skin. A fresh support is thus obtained, enabling it to pull the tip of its abdomen from its sheath.

There are therefore two means of support: first the end of the belly and then the front claws; and there are two principal movements: in the first place the downward somersault, in the second place the return to the normal position. These gymnastics demand that the larva shall fix itself to a twig, head upwards, and that it shall have a free space beneath it. Suppose that these conditions were lacking, thanks to my wiles: what would happen? That remained to be seen.

I tie a thread to the end of one of the hind-legs and hang the larva up in the peaceful atmosphere of a test-tube. My thread [47]is a plumb-line which will remain vertical, for there is nothing to interfere with it. In this unwonted posture, which places its head at the bottom at a time when the near approach of the transformation demands that it should be at the top, the unfortunate creature for a long time kicks about and struggles, striving to turn over and to seize with its fore-claws either the thread by which it hangs or one of its own hind-legs. Some of them succeed in their efforts, draw themselves up as best they can, fasten themselves as they wish, despite the difficulty of keeping their balance, and effect their metamorphosis without impediment.

Others wear themselves out in vain. They do not catch hold of the thread, they do not bring their heads upwards. Then the transformation is not accomplished. Sometimes the dorsal rupture takes place, leaving bare the mesothorax swollen into a hernia, but the shelling proceeds no farther and the insect soon dies. More often still the larva perishes intact, without the least fissure.

Another experiment. I place the larva in a glass jar with a thin bed of sand, which makes progress possible. The animal moves along, but is not able to hoist itself up anywhere: [48]the slippery sides of the glass prevent this. Under these conditions, the captive expires without trying to transform itself. I have known exceptions to this miserable ending; I have sometimes seen the larva undergo a regular metamorphosis on a layer of sand thanks to peculiarities of equilibrium which were very difficult to distinguish. In the main, when the normal attitude or something very near it is impossible, metamorphosis does not take place and the insect succumbs. That is the general rule.

This result seems to tell us that the larva is capable of opposing the forces which are at work in it when the transformation is at hand. A cabbage-silique, a pea-pod invariably burst to set free their seeds. The Cicada-larva, a sort of pod containing, by way of seed, the perfect insect, is able to control its dehiscence, to defer it until a more opportune moment and even to suppress it altogether in unfavourable circumstances. Convulsed by the profound revolution that takes place in its body on the point of transfiguration, but at the same time warned by instinct that the conditions are not good, the insect makes a desperate resistance and dies rather than consent to open.[49]

Apart from the trials to which my curiosity subjects it, I do not see that the Cicada-larva is exposed to any danger of perishing in this way. There is always a bit of brushwood of some kind near the exit-hole. The newly-exhumed insect climbs on it; and a few minutes are enough for the animal pod to split down the back. This swift hatching has often been a source of trouble to me in my studies. A larva appears on the hills not far from my house. I catch sight of it just as it is fastening on the twig. It would form an interesting subject of observation indoors. I place it in a paper bag, together with the stick that carries it, and hurry home. This takes me a quarter of an hour, but it is labour lost: by the time that I arrive, the green Cicada is almost free. I shall not see what I was bent on seeing. I had to abandon this method of obtaining information and be content with an occasional lucky find within a few yards of my door.

“Everything is in everything,” as Jacotot the pedagogue1 used to say. In connection [50]with that remarkably quick metamorphosis a culinary question arises. According to Aristotle, Cicadæ were a highly-appreciated dish among the Greeks. I am not acquainted with the great naturalist’s text: humble villager that I am, my library possesses no such treasure. I happen, however, to have before me a venerable tome which can tell me just what I want to know. I refer to Matthiolus’ Commentaries on Dioscorides.2 As an eminent scholar, who must have known his Aristotle very well, Matthiolus inspires me with complete confidence. Now he says:

“Mirum non est quod dixerit Aristoteles, cicadas esse gustu suavissimas antequam tettigometræ rumpatur cortex.”

Knowing that tettigometra, or mother of the Cicada, is the expression used by the ancients to denote the larva, we see that, according to Aristotle, the Cicadæ possess a flavour most delicious to the taste before the bark or outer covering of the matrix bursts.[51]

This detail of the unbroken covering tells us at what season the toothsome dainty should be picked. It cannot be in winter, when the earth is dug deep by the plough, for at that time there is no danger of the larva’s hatching. People do not recommend an utterly superfluous precaution. It is therefore in summer, at the period of the emergence from underground, when a good search will discover the larvæ, one by one, on the surface of the soil. This is the real moment to take care that the wrapper is unbroken. It is the moment also to hasten the gathering and the preparations for cooking: in a very few minutes the wrapper will burst.

Are the ancient culinary reputation and that appetizing epithet, suavissimas gustu, well-deserved? We have an excellent opportunity: let us profit by it and restore to honour, if the occasion warrant it, the dish extolled by Aristotle. Rondelet,3 Rabelais’ erudite friend, gloried in having rediscovered [52]garum, the famous sauce made from the entrails of rotten fish. Would it not be a meritorious work to give the epicures their tettigometræ again?

On a morning in July, when the sun is up and has invited the Cicadæ to leave the ground, the whole household, big and little, go out searching. There are five of us engaged in exploring the enclosure, especially the edges of paths, which yield the best results. To prevent the skin from bursting, as each larva is found I dip it into a glass of water. Asphyxia will stay the work of metamorphosis. After two hours of careful seeking, when every forehead is streaming with perspiration, I am the owner of four larvæ, no more. They are dead or dying in their preserving bath; but this does not matter, since they are destined for the frying-pan.

The method of cooking is of the simplest, so as to alter as little as possible the flavour reputed to be so exquisite: a few drops of oil, a pinch of salt, a little onion and that is all. There is no conciser recipe in the whole of La Cuisinière bourgeoise. At dinner, the fry is divided fairly among all of us hunters.[53]

The stuff is unanimously admitted to be eatable. True, we are people blessed with good appetites and wholly unprejudiced stomachs. There is even a slightly shrimpy flavour which would be found in a still more pronounced form in a brochette of Locusts. It is, however, as tough as the devil and anything but succulent; we really feel as if we were chewing bits of parchment. I will not recommend to anybody the dish extolled by Aristotle.

Certainly, the renowned animal-historian was remarkably well-informed as a rule. His royal pupil sent on his behalf to India, the land at that time so full of mystery, for the curiosities most impressive to Macedonian eyes; he received by caravan the Elephant, the Panther, the Tiger, the Rhinoceros, the Peacock; and he described them faithfully. But, in Macedonia itself, he knew the insect only through the peasant, that stubborn tiller of the soil, who found the tettigometra under his spade and was the first to know that a Cicada comes out of it. Aristotle, therefore, in his immense undertaking, was doing more or less what Pliny was to do later, with a much greater amount of artless credulity. He listened to [54]the chit-chat of the country-side and set it down as veracious history.

Rustic waggery is world-famous. The countryman is always ready to jeer at the trifles which we call science; he laughs at whoso stops to examine an insignificant insect; he goes into fits of laughter if he sees us picking up a pebble, looking at it and putting it in our pocket. The Greek peasant excelled in this sort of thing. He told the townsman that the tettigometra was a dish fit for the gods, of an incomparable flavour, suavissima gustu. But, while making his victim’s mouth water with hyperbolical praises, he put it out of his power to satisfy his longings, by laying down the essential condition that he must gather the delicious morsel before the shell had burst.

I should like to see any one try to get together the material for a sufficiently copious dish by gathering a few handfuls of tettigometræ just coming out of the earth, when my squad of five took two hours to find four larvæ on ground rich in Cicadæ. Above all, mind that the skin does not break during your search, which will last for days and days, whereas the bursting takes place in a few minutes. My opinion [55]is that Aristotle never tasted a fry of tettigometræ; and my own culinary experience is my witness. He is repeating some rustic jest in all good faith. His heavenly dish is too horrible for words.

Oh, what a fine collection of stories I too could make about the Cicada, if I listened to all that my neighbours the peasants tell me! I will give one particular of his history and one alone, as related in the country.

Have you any renal infirmity? Are you dropsical at all? Do you need a powerful depurative? The village pharmacopœia is unanimous in suggesting the Cicada as a sovran remedy. The insects are collected in summer, in their adult form. They are strung together and dried in the sun and are fondly preserved in a corner of the press. A housewife would think herself lacking in prudence if she allowed July to pass without threading her store of them.

Do you suffer from irritation of the kidneys, or perhaps from stricture? Quick, have some Cicada-tea! Nothing, they tell me, is so efficacious. I am duly grateful to the good soul who once, as I have since heard, made me drink a concoction of the sort, without my knowing it, for some [56]trouble or other; but I remain profoundly incredulous. I am struck, however, by the fact that the same specific was recommended long ago by Dioscorides. The old Cilician doctor tells us:

“Cicadæ, quæ inassatæ manduntur, vesicæ doloribus prosunt.”

Ever since the far-off days of this patriarch of materia medica, the Provençal peasant has retained his faith in the remedy revealed to him by the Greeks who brought the olive, the fig-tree and the vine from Phocæa. One thing alone is changed: Dioscorides advises us to eat our Cicadæ roasted; nowadays they are boiled and taken as an infusion.

The explanation given of the insect’s diuretic properties is wonderfully ingenuous. The Cicada, as all of us here know, shoots a sudden spray of urine, as it flies away, in the face of any one who tries to take hold of it. He is therefore bound to hand on his powers of evacuation to us. Thus must Dioscorides and his contemporaries have [57]argued; and thus does the peasant of Provence argue to this day.

O my worthy friends, what would you say if you knew the virtues of the tettigometra, which is capable of mixing mortar with its urine to build a meteorological station withal! You would be driven to borrow the hyperbole of Rabelais, who shows us Gargantua seated on the towers of Notre-Dame and drowning with the deluge from his mighty bladder so many thousand Paris loafers, not to mention the women and children!

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