Only one thing is changed: Dioscorides advises us to eat the Cigales roasted, but now they 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..