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 i3th 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 i3th 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 1 3th and lower still, to 29 in., on the 

 I9th. 



