after fruitless experiments on my own fingers and those of other
members of my household during the winter of 1895, when the severe and
persistent cold produced an abundant crop of chilblains. None of us,
treated with the celebrated unguent, observed the swelling to diminish;
none of us found that the pain and discomfort was in the least assuaged
by the sticky varnish formed by the juices of the crushed _tigno_. It is
not easy to believe that others are more successful, but the popular
renown of the specific survives in spite of all, probably thanks to a
simple accident of identity between the name of the remedy and that of
the infirmity: the Provencal for "chilblain" is _tigno_. From the moment
when the chilblain and the nest of the Mantis were known by the same
name were not the virtues of the latter obvious? So are reputations
created.

In my own village, and doubtless to some extent throughout the Midi, the
_tigno_--the nest of the Mantis, not the chilblain--is also reputed as a
marvellous cure for toothache. It is enough to carry it upon the person
to be free of that lamentable affection. Women wise in such matters
gather them beneath a propitious moon, and preserve them piously in some
corner of the clothes-press or wardrobe. They sew them in the lining of
the pocket, lest they should be pulled out with the handkerchief and
lost; they will grant the loan of them to a neighbour tormented by some
refractory molar. "Lend me thy _tigno_: I am suffering martyrdom!" begs
the owner of a swollen face.--"Don't on any account lose it!" says the
lender: "I haven't another, and we aren't at the right time of moon!"

We will not laugh at the credulous victim; many a remedy triumphantly
puffed on the latter pages of the newspapers and magazines is no more
effectual. Moreover, this rural simplicity is surpassed by certain old
books which form the tomb of the science of a past age. An English
naturalist of the sixteenth century, the well-known physician, Thomas
Moffat, informs us that children lost in the country would inquire their
way of the Mantis. The insect consulted would extend a limb, indicating
the direction to be taken, and, says the author, scarcely ever was the
insect mistaken. This pretty story is told in Latin, with an adorable
simplicity.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GOLDEN GARDENER.--ITS NUTRIMENT

In writing the first lines of this chapter I am reminded of the
slaughter-pens of Chicago; of those horrible meat