Later, in the higher order of creation, sometimes even among insects, he is awarded a task as a collaborator; and nothing better could be desired: the family must needs gain by it. But the Cricket, faithful to the old traditions, has not yet got so far. Therefore the object of yesterday’s longing becomes to-day an object of hatred, ill-treated, disembowelled and eaten up. Even when free to escape from his pugnacious mate, the superannuated Cricket soon perishes, a victim to life. In June, all my captives succumb, some dying a natural, others a violent death. The mothers survive for some time in the midst of their newly-hatched family. But things happen differently when the males have the advantage of remaining bachelors: they then enjoy a remarkable longevity. Let me relate the facts. We are told that the music-loving Greeks used to keep Cicadæ in cages, the better to enjoy their singing. I venture to disbelieve the whole story. In the first place, the harsh clicking of the Cicadæ, when long continued at close quarters, is a torture to ears that are at all delicate. The Greeks’ sense of hearing was too well-disciplined to take pleasure in such raucous sounds away from the general concert of the fields, which is heard at a distance. In the second place, it is absolutely impossible to bring up Cicadæ in captivity, unless we cover over an olive-tree or a plane-tree, which would supply us with a vivarium very difficult to instal on a window-sill. A single day spent in a cramped enclosure would make the high-flying insect die of boredom. Is it not possible that people have confused the Cricket with the Cicada, as they also do the Green Grasshopper? With the Cricket they would be quite right. He is one who bears captivity gaily: his stay-at-home ways predispose him to it. He lives happily and whirrs without ceasing in a cage no larger than a man’s fist, provided that we serve him with his lettuce-leaf every day. Was it not he whom the small boys of Athens reared in little wire cages hanging on a window-frame? Their successors in Provence and all over the south have the same tastes. In the towns, a Cricket becomes the child’s treasured possession. The insect, petted and pampered, tells him in its ditty of the simple joys of the country. Its death throws the whole household into a sort of mourning. Well, these recluses, these compulsory celibates, live to be patriarchs. They keep fit and well long after their cronies in the fields have succumbed; and they go on singing till September. Those additional three months, a long space of time, double their existence in the adult form.