MY WORK AND MY WORKSHOP 



was no thyme left, nor lavender, nor a single clump of 

 the dwarf oak. As thyme and lavender might be useful 

 to me as a hunting-ground for Bees and Wasps, I was 

 obliged to plant them again. 



There were plenty of weeds : couch-grass, and prickly 

 centauries, and the fierce Spanish oyster-plant, with its 

 spreading orange flowers and spikes strong as nails. 

 Above it towered the Illyrian cotton-thistle, whose 

 straight and solitary stalk grows sometimes to the height 

 of six feet and ends in large pink tufts. There were 

 smaller thistles too, so well armed that the plant-collector 

 can hardly tell where to grasp them, and spiky knap- 

 weeds, and in among them, in long lines provided with 

 hooks, the shoots of the blue dewberry creeping along 

 the ground. If you had visited this prickly thicket with- 

 out wearing high boots, you would have paid dearly for 

 your rashness ! 



Such was the Eden that I won by forty years of 

 desperate struggle. 



This curious, barren Paradise of mine is the happy 

 hunting-ground of countless Bees and Wasps. Never 

 have I seen so large a population of insects at a single 

 spot. All the trades have made it their centre. Here 

 come hunters of every kind of game, builders in clay, 

 cotton-weavers, leaf-cutters, architects in pasteboard, 



[7] 



