The Life of the Fly 



rather was, when I took possession of it, the 

 Eden of bliss where I mean to live henceforth 

 alone with the insect. Forty years of desper- 

 ate struggle have won it for me. 



Eden, I said; and, from the point of view 

 that interests me, the expression is not out of 

 place. This cursed ground, which no one 

 would have had at a gift to sow with a pinch 

 of turnip-seed, is an earthly paradise for the 

 Bees and Wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles 

 and centauries draws them all to me from 

 everywhere around. Never, in my insect-hunt- 

 ing memories, have I seen so large a popula- 

 tion at a single spot ; all the trades have made it 

 their raljying-point. Here come hunters of 

 every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers 

 of cotton goods, collectors of pieces cut from 

 a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects in 

 pasteboard, plasterers mixing mortar, carpen- 

 ters boring wood, miners digging underground 

 galleries, workers handling goldbeater's skin 

 and many more. 



-• Who is this one? An Anthidium. 1 She 

 scrapes the cobwebby stalk of the yellow- 

 flowered centaury and gathers a ball of wad- 

 ding which she carries off proudly in the tips 

 of her mandibles. She will turn it, under 

 ground, into cotton-felt satchels to hold the 



1 A Tailor-bee. — Translator's Note. 



18 



