Our gastrosopher was speaking only of the culinary caprices of man rendered
fastidious by the sweets of life; but he might, in a more serious
department of thought, have given his formula a wider and more general
bearing and applied it to the dishes which vary so greatly according to
latitude, climate and customs; he might above all have taken into his
reckoning the harsh realities suffered by the common people, when perhaps
his ideal of moral worth would have been found in a platter of chick-peas
oftener than in a pot of pate de foie gras. No matter: his aphorism, the
mere whimsical sally of an epicure, becomes an imperious truth if we forget
the luxury of the table and look into what is eaten by the little world
which swarms around us.

To each its mess. The cabbage Pieris consumes the pungent leaves of the
Cruciferae as the food of her infancy; the Silkworm disdains any foliage
other than that of the mulberry-tree. The Spurge Hawk-moth requires the
caustic milk-sap of the tithymals: the Corn-weevil the grain of wheat; the
Pea-weevil, the seeds of the Leguminosae; the Balaninus (A genus of Beetles
including the Acorn-weevil, the Nut-weevil and others.--Translator's Note.)
the hazel-nut, the chestnut, the acorn; the Brachycera (A division of Flies
including the Gad-flies and Robber-flies.--Translator's Note.) the clove of
garlic. Each has its diet, each its plant; and each plant has its customary
guests. Their relations are so precise that in many cases one might
determine the insect by the vegetable which supports it, or the vegetable
by the insect.

If you know the lily, you may name as a Crioceris the tiny scarlet
Scarabaeid that inhabits it and peoples its leaves with larvae which keep
themselves cool beneath an overcoat of ordure. (For the Lily-beetle, or
Crioceris merdigera, cf. "The Glow-worm and Other Beetles," by J. Henri
Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 16 and 17.--