8 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



yourself to a smarting in the calves. As long as the 

 ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this 

 rude vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the 

 pyramids of the oyster-plant and the slender branches of 

 the cotton-thistle rise above the wide carpet formed by the 

 yellow-flowered centaury's saffron heads; but let the 

 droughts of summer come and we see but a desolate 

 waste, which the flame of a match would set ablaze from 

 one end to the other. Such is, or rather was, when I took 

 possession of it, the Eden of bliss where I mean to live 

 henceforth alone with the insect. Forty years of des- 

 perate struggle have won it for me. 



Eden, I said ; and, from the point of view that interests 

 me, the expression is not out of place. This cursed 

 ground, which no one would have had at a gift to sow 

 with a pinch of turnip-seed, is an earthly paradise for 

 the Bees and the Wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles 

 and centauries draws them all to me from everywhere 

 around. Never, in my insect-hunting memories, have 

 I seen so large a population at a single spot ; all the trades 

 have made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters of 

 every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton 

 goods, collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of 

 a flower, architects in pasteboard, plasterers mixing mor- 

 tar, carpenters boring wood, miners digging underground 

 galleries, workers handling goldbeater's skin and many 

 more. 



Who is this one? An Anthidium.^ She scrapes the 



^ A Cotton-bee. — Translator's Note. 



