CHAPTER XVIII 



THE HAIRY AMMOPHILA 



ONE day in May, I was walking up and 

 down, on the look-out for anything 

 fresh that might be taking place in the har- 

 mas ^ laboratory. Favier was not far off, 

 at work in the kitchen-garden. Who is 

 Favier? I may as well say a few words 

 about him at once, for we shall be hearing 

 of him again. 



Favier is an old soldier. He has pitched 

 his hut of clay and branches under the Afri- 

 can carob-trees; he has eaten Sea-urchins at 

 Constantinople; he has shot Starlings in the 

 Crimea, during a lull in the firing. He has 

 seen much and remembered much. In win- 

 ter, when work in the fields ends at four 

 o'clock and the evenings are long, he puts 

 away rake, fork and barrow and comes and 

 sits on the hearth-stone of the kitchen fire- 

 place, where the billets of ilex-wood blaze 

 merrily. He fetches out his pipe, fills it 



^The piece of waste ground on which the author used 

 to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life 

 of the Fly: chap. i. — Translator's Note. 



