The Professor: Avignon 



disgraceful parsimony of the day where education 

 was concerned; such was the edict of our govern- 

 ment red-tape : I was an irregular, the offspring of 

 my solitary studies. And so I was forgetting the 

 poverty and anxieties of a professor's life amid my 

 books, when I chanced to turn over the pages of 

 an entomological essay that had fallen into my 

 hands I forget how. 



It was a monograph by the then father of en- 

 tomology, the venerable scientist Leon Dufour, on 

 the habits of a Wasp that hunted Buprestis beetles. 

 Certainly, I had not waited till then to interest my- 

 self in insects; from my early childhood I had de- 

 lighted in Beetles, Bees, and Butterflies; as far 

 back as I can remember, I see myself in ecstasy be- 

 fore the splendour of a Ground-beetle's wing-cases 

 or the wings of Papilio machaon, the Swallowtail. 

 The fire was laid ; the spark to kindle it was ab- 

 sent. Leon Dufour's essay provided that spark. 1 



New lights burst forth : I received a sort of 

 mental revelation. So there was more in science 

 than the arranging of pretty Beetles in a cork box 

 and giving them names and classifying them; there 

 was something much finer : a close and loving study 

 of insect life, the examination of the structure and 

 especially the faculties of each species. I read of 

 a magnificent instance of this, glowing with ex- 

 citement as I did so. Some time after, aided by 



iJLeon Dufour (1780-1865) was an Army surgeon 

 who in 1823 went through the Spanish campaign, and 

 on returning to France settled in his native town, Saint- 

 Sever, where he devoted himself chiefly to entomology. 



153 



