The Old Weevils 
of a piece of paste-board. In so doing we 
are examining a volume taken from the li- 
brary of the mountains; we are turning the 
pages of a magnificently illustrated book. It 
is a manuscript of nature, far superior to any 
Egyptian papyrus. On almost every page 
are diagrams, nay better, realities converted 
into pictures. 
Here is a page of fish, grouped at random. 
One might take them for a dish fried in oil. 
Backbone, fins, vertebral column, the little 
bones of the head, the crystalline lens turned 
into a black globule: all is there, in its natural 
arrangement. One thing alone is absent: 
the flesh. No matter: our dish of gudgeons 
looks so good that we feel tempted to scratch 
a bit off with our finger and taste this super- 
secular preserve. Let us indulge our fancy 
and put between our teeth a morsel of this 
mineral fry seasoned with petroleum. 
There is no inscription to the picture. 
Reflection makes good the deficiency. It 
tells us: 
“These fish lived here, in large numbers, 
in peaceful waters. Suddenly a spate came, 
asphyxiating them in its mud-thickened tor- 
rent. Buried forthwith in the mire and thus 
13 
