The Hermit of Serlgnan 



God knows what shifts to pick up a liveHhood/ 

 he went through all the disappointments of the 

 countryman turned townsman. Persecuted by bad 

 luck, borne down by the burden for all his energy 

 and good will, he was far indeed from starting me 

 in entomology. He had other cares, cares more 

 direct and more serious. A good cufE or two when 

 he saw me pinning an insect to a cork was all the 

 encouragement that I received from him. Perhaps 

 he was right. 



The conclusion is positive: there is nothing in 

 heredity to explain my taste for observation. You 

 may say that I do not go far enough back. Well, 

 what should I find beyond the grandparents where 

 my facts come to a stop? I know, partly. I 

 should find even more uncultured ancestors: sons 

 of the soil, ploughmen, sowers of rye, neat-herds; 

 one and all, by the very force of things, of not 

 the least account in the nice matters of obser- 

 vation.^ 



Between the parents and the son, what a 

 difference, what a change of life and of des- 

 tiny! Quantum mutatus ab illis! This, no 

 doubt, is the first thing to strike one; and 

 here, too, we have one of the most salient 

 features of the superiority of the human in- 

 telligence; this almost infinite possibility of 



iThe author's father kept a cafe at Pierrelatte and 

 other small towns in the south of France. — A. T. de M. 



^Souvenirs, VI., pp. 26-37, 42. The Life of the Fly, 

 chap, v., "Heredity." 



229 



