The Hairy Ammophila 



I take Favier away from his work in the 

 garden to scour the woods with me; and 

 there, in the tangle of some bramble-bush, 

 we hunt together for those microscopic 

 growths which speckle with black dots the 

 tiny branches strewn all over the soil. He 

 calls the largest species " gunpowder," an 

 accurate expression which has already been 

 used by the botanists to describe one of those 

 Sphaeriacese. He feels quite proud of his 

 bunch of discoveries, which is richer than 

 mine. When he lights upon a magnificent 

 rosellinia, a mass of black pustules wrapped 

 in a purplish down, we smoke a pipe to cele- 

 brate the joyous occasion. 



He excels, above all things, in ridding me 

 of the troublesome folk whom I meet upon 

 my rambles. The peasant is naturally curi- 

 ous, as fond of asking questions as a child; 

 but his curiosity is flavoured with a spice of 

 malice and in all his questions there is an 

 undercurrent of chaff. What he fails to un- 

 derstand he turns into ridicule. And what 

 can be more ludicrous than a gentleman look- 

 ing through a glass at a Fly captured with a 

 gauze net, or a bit of rotten wood picked 

 up from the ground? Favier cuts short the 

 bantering catechism with a word. 

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