The Life of the Caterpillar 



problem for him. The colonies under glass, 

 therefore, provide most of the material for my 

 notes; the colonies in the open air add their 

 testimony, which is not always quite clear. 



Now what did they tell me, those green- 

 house caterpillars who, on the 13th of Decem- 

 ber, refused to show themselves to my guest, 

 the forest-ranger? The rain that was to fall 

 that night could hardly have alarmed them: 

 they were so well sheltered. The snow about 

 to whiten Mont Ventoux was nothing to 

 them : it was so far away. Moreover, it was 

 neither snowing yet nor raining. Some ex- 

 traordinary atmospheric event, profound and 

 of vast extent, must have been occurring. 

 The charts in the Temps and the bulletin of 

 the Normal School told me as much. 



A cyclonic disturbance, coming from the 

 British Isles, was passing over our district; an 

 atmospheric depression the like of which the 

 season had not as yet known, had spread in 

 our direction, reaching us on the 13th and 

 persisting, in a more or less accentuated form, 

 until the 22nd. At Avignon the barometer 

 suddenly fell half an inch, to 29.1 in., on 

 the 13th and lower still, to 29 in., on the 

 19th. 



102 



