The larva of the Common Cockchafer, the White Worm, a voracious nibbler of tender roots, is the scourge of our crops; that of the Pine Cockchafer seems to me to work hardly any havoc. Decayed rootlets, decomposing vegetable remains, are all that it needs. As to the adults, they browse upon the green pine-needles, without abusing their privilege. If I were a land-owner, I should not trouble my head about their devastations. A few mouthfuls taken from the immense store of leaves, a few pine-needles robbed of their points, are not a serious matter. Let us leave the Pine Cockchafer alone. He is an ornament of the balmy twilight, a pretty jewel of the summer solstice. CHAPTER X THE VEGETARIAN INSECTS Alone of living creatures, civilized man knows how to eat, by which I mean to say that he treats the affairs of the stomach with a certain pomp and circumstance. He is an expert cook and an artist in delicate sauces. He celebrates his meals with luxurious plate and crockery. He officiates at table like a high-priest; he practises rites and ceremonies. At his banquets he calls for music and flowers, that he may masticate his portion of dead flesh in splendour. Animals do not display these eccentricities. They merely feed, which, after all, may very well be the true means of avoiding deterioration. They take nourishment; and that, for them, is enough. They eat to live, whereas many of us live, above all, to eat. Man’s stomach is a pit in which all things edible are engulfed. The stomach of the vegetarian insect is a fastidious laboratory to which nothing but appointed mouthfuls are allowed to find their way. Each guest at the vegetarian banquet has its plant, its fruits, its pod, its seed, which it eagerly exploits, disdaining other victuals, though they may be of equal value. The carnivorous insect, on the other hand, has no narrow specialities and devours any kind of flesh. The Golden Carabus finds the caterpillar, the Mantis, the Cockchafer, the Earthworm, the Slug or any other kind of game to his taste. The Cerceres collect, for their grubs, bags of Weevils or Buprestes, without distinction of species. The Bruchus, [66] on the other hand, will touch nothing but her pea or her bean; the Golden Rhynchites [67] only her sloe; the Spotted Larinus [68] only the sky-blue ball of her little thistle; the Nut-weevil [69] only her filbert; the Iris-weevil [70] only the capsule of the yellow water iris. And so with other insects. The vegetarian is a short-sighted specialist; the meat-eater an emancipated generalizer.