More Hunting Wasps 



leisure and application, for residence in a 

 country village. You are then familiar with 

 every spot in your own grounds and the sur- 

 rounding country and you can go to work 

 with certainty. 



Twenty-three years have passed; and here 

 I am at Serignan, where I have become a 

 peasant, working by turns on my writing-pad 

 and my cabbage-patch. On the 14th of Au- 

 gust, 1880, Favier ^ clears away a heap of 

 mould consisting of vegetable refuse and of 

 leaves stacked in a corner against the wall 

 of the paddock. This clearance is consi- 

 dered necessary because Bull, when the lov- 

 ers' moon arrives, uses this hillock to climb 

 to the top of the wall and thence to repair to 

 the canine wedding the news of which is 

 brought to him by the effluvia borne upon 

 the air. His pilgrimage fulfilled, he returns, 

 with a discomfited look and a slit ear, but 

 always ready, once he has had his feed, to 

 repeat the escapade. To put an end to this 

 licentious behaviour, which has cost him so 

 many gaping wounds, we decided to remove 

 the heap of soil which serves him as a ladder 

 of escape. 



1 An ex-soldier who acted as the author's gardener and 

 factotum. — Translator's Note. 

 46 



