The Giant Scarites 



happy to find some gleams of reason in the 

 insect. What truth is there in this unani- 

 mous statement, which in the one case is too 

 unreflecting and in the other too much in- 

 cHned to favour theoretical fancies? 



Logical arguments are insuflficient here. 

 It is essential that we should obtain the ver- 

 dict of experiment, which alone can furnish 

 a valid reply. But to which of the insects 

 shall we go first? 



I remember something that dates back 

 some forty years. Delighted with a recent 

 University triumph, I was staying at Cette, 

 on my return from Toulouse, where I had 

 just passed my examination as a licentiate 

 in natural science. It gave me a fine chance 

 of renewing my acquaintance with the sea- 

 side flora, which had delighted me a few 

 years before on the shores of the wonderful 

 Gulf of Ajaccio. It would have been foolish 

 to neglect it. A degree does not confer the 

 right to cease studying. If one really has a 

 touch of the sacred fire in one's veins, one 

 remains a student all one's life, not of books, 

 which are a poor resource, but of the great, 

 inexhaustible school of actual things. 



One day, then, in July, in the cool stillness 

 of the dawn, I was botanizing on the fore- 

 shore at Cette. For the first time I plucked 

 361 



