The Life of the Fly 



no grudge against the sine and the cosine, 

 which I continue to hold in high esteem. They 

 cost me many a pallid hour at one time, but 

 they always afforded me some first-rate enter- 

 tainment : they still do so, when my head lies 

 tossing sleeplessly on its pillow. 



Meanwhile, Ajaccio received the visit of a 

 famous Avignon botanist, Requien 1 by name, 

 who, with a box crammed with paper under 

 his arm, had long been botanizing all over 

 Corsica, pressing and drying specimens and 

 distributing them to his friends. We soon be- 

 came acquainted. I accompanied him in my 

 free time on his explorations and never did 

 the master have a more attentive disciple. To 

 tell the truth, Requien was not a man of 

 learning so much as an enthusiastic collector. 

 Very few would have felt capable of compe- 

 ting with him when it came to giving the name 

 or the geographical distribution of a plant. 

 A blade of grass, a pad of moss, a scab of 

 lichen, a thread of seaweed: he knew them all. 

 The scientific name flashed across his mind at 

 once. What an unerring memory, what a 

 genius for classification amid the enormous 



1 Esprit Requien (1788-1851), a French naturalist and 

 collector, director of the museum and botanical gardens 

 at Avignon and author of several works on botany and 

 conchology. — Translator's Note. 



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