i8o INSECT LIFE 



XIII 



scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate, which loves an 

 African sky ; up above you find a hairy little poppy 

 sheltering its stalks under a covering of small stony 

 fragments, and which opens its large yellow corolla 

 in the icy solitudes of Greenland and the North 

 Cape, just as it does on the highest slopes of 

 Ventoux. 



Such contrasts have always a new charm, and 

 twenty-five ascents have not yet brought me satiety. 

 In August 1865 I undertook the twenty-third. We 

 were eight persons — three who came to botanise, five 

 attracted by a mountain expedition and the pano- 

 rama of the heights. None of those who were not 

 botanists have ever again desired to accompany me. 

 In truth, the expedition is a rough one, and a sunrise 

 does not atone for the fatigue endured. 



The best comparison for Mont Ventoux is that 

 of a heap of stones broken up to mend the roads. 

 Raise this heap steeply up to two kilometres, and give 

 it a base in proportion, cast on the white of its lime- 

 stone the blackness of forests, and you get a clear 

 idea of the general look of the mountain. This 

 heap of debris — sometimes little chips, sometimes 

 huge masses of rock — rises from the plain without 

 preliminary slopes or successive terraces to render 

 ascent less trying by dividing it into stages. The 

 climb begins at once, by rocky paths, the best of 

 which is not as good as a road newly laid with stones, 

 and rising ever rougher and rougher to the summit, 

 a height of 1 9 1 2 metres. Fresh lawns, glad rivulets, 

 the ample shade of ancient trees — all that gives such 

 a charm to other mountains is here unknown, re- 

 placed by an endless bed of calcareous rock broken 



