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198 INSECT LIFE 



XIV 



of Ventoux, swept by the gusty Mistral, uprooting 

 beech and pine, — summits where the bise whirls 

 about the snow for six months of the year, — crests 

 wrapped for the greater part of the year by cold 

 clouds and mist, — can be adopted as a winter refuge 

 by such a sun-loving insect ? One might as well make 

 it hibernate among the ice fields of the North 

 Cape ! No, it is not there that A. hirsuta must pass 

 the cold season. The group observed there were 

 making a temporary halt. At the first indication of 

 rain, which, though it escaped us, could not escape the 

 insect so eminently sensitive to the variations of the 

 atmosphere, the wayfarers had taken refuge under 

 a stone, and were waiting for the rain to pass before 

 they resumed their flight. Whence came they ? 

 Where were they going ? 



In this same month of August, and especially in 

 September, there come to the warm olive region 

 Hocks of little migratory birds ; descending by 

 stages from the lands where they have loved, — 

 fresher, more wooded, more peaceful lands than 

 ours, — where they have brought up their broods. 

 They come almost to a day in an invariable order, 

 as if guided by the dates of an almanac known 

 only to themselves. They sojourn for a while in 

 our plains, where abound the insects which are the 

 chief food of most of them ; they visit every clod 

 in our fields where the ploughshare has turned up 

 innumerable worms in the furrows, and feast on 

 them, and with this diet they speedily lay on fat, 

 — a storehouse and reserve to serve as nutrition 

 agciinst toils to come, and thus well provided for the 

 journey they go on southward, to reach winterless 



