Retirement: Orange 



I am living at Orange in the year 1879. My 

 house stands alone among the fields. . . . 



After a hard winter, when the snow had lain 

 on the ground for a fortnight, I wanted once more 

 to look into the matter of my Halicti. I was in 

 bed with pneumonia and to all appearances at the 

 point of death. I had little or no pain, thank God, 

 but extreme difficulty in living. With the little 

 lucidity left to me, being able to do no other sort 

 of observing, I observed myself dying; I watched 

 with a certain interest the gradual falling to pieces 

 of my poor machinery. Were it not for the terror 

 of leaving my family, who were still young, I would 

 gladly have departed. The after-life must have 

 so many higher and fairer truths to teach us. 



My hour had not yet come. When the little 

 lamps of thought began to emerge, all flickering, 

 from the dusk of unconsciousness, I wished to take 

 leave of the Hymenoptera, my fondest joy, and first 

 of all of my neighbour, the Halictus. 1 My son 

 Emile took the spade and went and dug the frozen 

 ground. Not a male was found, of course; but 

 there were plenty of females, numbed with the cold 

 in their cells. 



A few were brought for me to see, and, roused 

 from their torpor by the warmth of the room, they 



1 The Halicti produce two generations each year: one, 

 in the spring, is the issue of mothers who, fecundated in 

 the autumn, have passed through the winter; the other, 

 produced in the summer, is the fruit of parthenogenesis, 

 that is, of procreation by the maternal virtualities alone. 

 Of the concourse of the two sexes only females are born; 

 parthenogenesis gives rise to both males and females. 

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