AS THE LABOURER OF MAN. 215 



terrible destroyers of plant-life, cany off the superfluous. They are 

 there a necessity. 

 They ravage among 

 the prodigious 

 abundance of spon- 

 taneous plants, of lost seeds, of the 

 fruits which Nature scatters over the 

 wastes. Here, in the narrow field 

 watered by the sweat of man, they gar- 

 ner in his place, devour his labour and 

 its harvest ; they attack even his 

 life. 



Do not say, " Winter is on my side ; 

 it will check the foe." Winter does but 

 slay the enemies which would perish 

 of themselves. It kills especially the 

 ephemera, whose existence was already 

 measured by that of the flower, or the 

 leaf with which it was bound up. But, 

 before dying, the prescient atom assures 

 the safety of its posterity; it finds for it 

 an asylum, conceals and carefully deposits 

 its future, the germ of its reproduction. 

 As eggs, as larvae, or in their own shapes, 

 living, mature, armed, these invisible 

 creatures sleep in the bosom of the earth, 

 awaiting their opportunity. Is she im- 

 movable, this earth ? In the meadows 

 I see her undulate the black miner, 

 the mole, continues her labours. At a 

 higher elevation, in the dry grounds, 

 stretch the subterranean granaries, 



where the philosophical rat, on a good pile of corn, passes the season 

 in patience. 



