AS THE LABOURER OF MAN. 215 
terrible destroyers of plant-life, carry 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 egos, as larvee, 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. Ata 
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, 
