More Hunting Wasps 



row-hawk retired from business; the Slug is 

 a Snail who has lost his shell with the ad- 

 vance of years; the Nightjar/ the Chaoucho- 

 grapaou, as he calls her, is an elderly Toad, 

 who, becoming enamoured of milk-food, has 

 grown feathers, so that she may enter the 

 byres and milk the Goats. It is impossible 

 to drive these fantastic ideas out of his head. 

 Favier himself, as will be seen, is an evolu- 

 tionist after his own fashion, an evolutionist 

 of a very daring type. In accounting for 

 the origin of animals nothing gives him 

 pause. He has a reply to everything: 

 " this " comes from " that." If you ask 

 him why, he answers : 



" Look at the resemblance I " 



Shall we reproach him with these insani- 

 ties, when we hear another, misled by the 

 Monkey's build, acclaim the Pithecanthropus 

 as man's precursor? Shall we reject the 

 metamorphosis of the Chaoucho-grapaou, 

 when people tell, us in all seriousness that, in 

 the present stage of scientific knowledge, it is 

 absolutely proved that man is descended 

 from some rough-hewn Ape? Of the two 

 transformations, Favier's strikes me as the 

 more credible. A painter of my acquaint- 



1 Known also as the Goatsucker, because of the mis- 

 taken belief that the bird sucks the milk of Goats, and, 

 in America, as the Whippoorwill. — Translator's Note. 



112 



