100 THE LIFE AND LOVE OF THE INSECT 



enclosure over and over again, a hundred times, by short 

 stages ; I stop here and I stop there ; patiently, I put 

 questions ; and, at long intervals, I receive some scrap of 

 a reply. 



The smallest insect village has become familiar to me : 

 I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis 

 perches ; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket strums 

 amid the calmness of the summer nights ; each wad-clad 

 blade of grass scraped by the Anthidium, that maker 

 of cotton bags; each cluster of lilac worked by the 

 Megachile, the leaf-cutter. 



If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden 

 do not suffice, a longer voyage shows ample profit. I 

 double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a 

 few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred 

 Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupe, the Copris, the 

 Dectus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short, with 

 a host of tribes the unfolding of whose story would 

 exhaust a human life. Certainly, I have plenty, I have 

 too much to do with my near neighbours, without going 

 and wandering in distant regions. 



And then, besides, roaming the world, scattering one's 

 attention over a host of subjects, is not observing. The 

 travelling entomologist can stick numerous species, the 

 joy of the collector and the nomenclator, into his boxes ; 

 but to gather circumstantial documents is a very different 

 matter. A Wandering Jew of science, he has no time to 

 stop. Where a prolonged stay would be necessary to 

 study this or that fact, he is hurried by the next stage. 

 We must not expect the impossible of him in these 

 conditions. Let him phi his specimens to cork tablets, 

 let him steep them in tafia jars and leave to the sedentary 

 the patient observations that require time. 



