The word haricot itself sets us thinking. It is an outlandish term, related to none of our expressions. Its turn of language, which is alien to our combinations of sounds, suggests to the mind some West-Indian jargon, as do caoutchouc and cocoa. Does the word, as a matter of fact, come from the American Redskins? Did we receive, together with the bean, the name by which it is called in its native country? Perhaps so; but how are we to know? Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us a curious linguistic problem. The Frenchman calls it also faséole, flageolet. The Provençal dubs it faïoù and favioù; the Catalan fayol; the Spaniard faseolo; the Portuguese feyâo; the Italian faguilo. Here I am on familiar ground: the languages of the Latin family have kept, with the inevitable terminal modifications, the ancient word faseolus. Now, if I consult my dictionary, I find: faselus, phaselus, faseolus, phaseolus, haricot. Learned vocabulary, permit me to tell you that your translation is wrong: phaselus or phaseolus cannot mean haricot. And the incontestable proof is in the Georgics [60] where Virgil tells us the season at which to sow the faseolus. He says: Si vero viciamque seres vilemque phaselum.... Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes; Incipe et ad medias sementem extende pruinas. [61] Nothing is clearer than the teaching of the poet, who was wonderfully well-informed on agricultural matters: we must begin to sow the phaselus when the constellation Bootes disappears at sunset, that is to say, at the end of October, and continue doing so until the middle of the winter. These conditions put the haricot out of the question: it is a chilly plant, which would not withstand the slightest frost. The winter would be fatal to it, even in the climate of the south of Italy. On the other hand, the pea, the broad bean, the everlasting pea and others, better able to resist the cold because of their country of origin, have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing and thrive during the winter, provided that the climate be fairly mild. What then does the phaselus of the Georgics stand for, that problematical bean which has handed down its name to the haricot in the Latin languages? Remembering the contemptuous epithet vilis with which the poet stigmatizes it, I feel inclined to look upon it as the chickling vetch, the coarse square pea, the jaisso despised by the Provençal peasant. The problem of the haricot had reached this stage, almost elucidated by the insect’s evidence alone, when an unexpected document came and gave me the last word of the riddle. It is once more a poet—and a very famous poet—M. José Maria de Heredia, [62] who comes to the naturalist’s aid. Without suspecting the service which he is rendering me, the village schoolmaster lends me a magazine [63] in which I read the following conversation between the masterly chaser of sonnets and a lady journalist who asks him which of his works he prefers: