252 The Hunting Wasps 



a very precious aid of a different kind, as my 

 story will show in good time. If I neglected to 

 furnish myself with this embarrassing adjunct 

 to a long walk, my only resource against sun- 

 stroke was to lie down at full length behind 

 some sandy knoll ; and, when the veins in my 

 temples were throbbing to bursting point, my 

 last hope lay in putting my head down a Rabbit- 

 burrow. Such are one's means of keeping cool 

 in the Bois des Issarts. 



The soil not occupied by those clumps of 

 woody vegetation is almost bare and consists of 

 fine, dry, very loose sand, which the wind heaps 

 into little dunes wherever the stems and roots of 

 the holm-oak interfere with its dissemination. 

 The sides of these sand-dunes are generally very 

 smooth, because of the extreme lightness of the 

 materials, which slide down into the smallest 

 depression and of their own accord restore the 

 evenness of the surface. You need but push 

 your finger into the sand and take it out again 

 to bring about an immediate landslip which 

 fills up the hole and restores things to their 

 original condition without leaving a visible 

 trace. But, at a certain depth, which varies 

 according to the more or less recent date of the 

 last rains, the sand retains a lingering dampness 

 which keeps it in its place and gives it a con- 

 sistency that enables it to have small excava- 



