The Professor: Avignon 



These excursions into the world of the 

 fields, the delight of his youth and his earliest 

 childhood, were henceforth to form the first 

 item on his programme of studies. Mathe- 

 matics were dropped, as Moquin-Tandon had 

 advised. Physics and chemistry were put in 

 their proper place, in the teaching of the 

 lycee, and the whole of the young professor's 

 free energies were expended upon the re- 

 search work of the naturalist. 



Necessarily limited by his occupation as a 

 teacher, his investigations could not at ordi- 

 nary times extend beyond the neighbourhood 

 of Avignon. One of his favourite localities 

 for observation, by reason of its nearness and 

 its entomological wealth, was the table-land 

 of Les Angles, opposite the town on the right 

 bank of the Rhone. Morning or evening, he 

 made quick work of crossing the river and 

 climbing the cliff which divides it from the 

 barren table-land which he calls his " little 

 Arabia Petrasa." 



Presently his Thursdays and holidays were 

 devoted to more distant and more prolonged 

 observations. His steps took him, by pref- 

 erence, down-stream from Avignon, along the 

 right bank of the Rhone, opposite the em- 

 bouchure of the Durance, to a spot known 

 as the Bois des Issarts. Not that he was 

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