Without going so far as the Arab naturalist, which would presuppose a power of digestion not bestowed on every man, I feel entitled to say that the Locust is a gift of God to a multitude of birds, as witness the long array of gizzards which I consulted. Many others, notably the reptile, hold him in esteem. I have found him in the belly of the Rassado, that terror of the small girls of Provence, I mean the Eyed Lizard, who loves rocky shelters turned into a furnace by a torrid sun. And I have often caught the little Grey Lizard of the walls in the act of carrying off, in his tapering snout, the spolia opima of some long-awaited Acridian. Even fish revel in him, when good fortune brings him to them. The Locust’s leap has no definite goal. A projectile discharged blindly, the insect comes down wherever the unpremeditated release of its springs shoots it. If the place where it falls happen to be the water, a fish is there at once to gobble up the dripping victim. It is sometimes a fatal dainty, for anglers use the Locust when they wish to bait their hook with a particularly attractive morsel. Without expatiating further on the devourers of this small game, I can clearly see the great usefulness of the Acridian who by successive leaps transmits to man, that most wasteful of eaters, the lean grass now converted into exquisite fare. Gladly therefore would I say, with the Arab writer: “Wherefore, from this testimony, it is very sure that, by the grace of God, Grasshoppers were given to man for his nourishment.” One thing alone makes me hesitate: the direct consumption of the Locust. As regards indirect consumption, under the form of Partridge, young Turkey and others, none will think of denying him his praises. Is direct consumption then so unpleasant? That was not the opinion of Omar, [80] the mighty caliph, the destroyer of the library of Alexandria. His stomach was as rude as his intellect; and, by his own account, he would have relished a basket of Grasshoppers. Long before him, others were content to eat them, though in this case it was a wise frugality. Clad in his Camel’s-hair garment, St. John the Baptist, the bringer of good tidings and the great stirrer of the populace in the days of Herod, lived in the desert on Grasshoppers and wild honey: “And his meat was locusts and wild honey,” says the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Wild honey I know, if only from the pots of the Chalicodoma. [81] It is a very agreeable food. There remains the Grasshopper of the desert, otherwise the Locust. In my youth, like every small boy, I appreciated a Grasshopper’s leg, which I used to eat raw. It is not without flavour. To-day let us rise a peg higher and try the fare of Omar and St. John the Baptist.