Other Leaf-Rollers 
have disappeared, leaving on the banks, as 
the trace of their brief passage, wretched 
muddy puddles soon absorbed by the sun. 
These sudden freshets bring a thousand 
live gleanings swept off the flanks of the 
mountains. The dry bed of the Aygues is 
a most interesting botanical garden. ‘There 
you may gather many vegetable species 
brought down from the higher levels, some 
temporary, disappearing without offspring in 
a single season, others persisting and adapt- 
ing themselves to the new climate. They 
come from far away, from the heights, these 
exiles; to pluck this one or that in its true 
environment you would have to climb Mont 
Ventoux, pass beyond the zone of the beeches 
and reach the altitude where trees cannot 
grow. 
Alien zoology in its turn is represented in 
the osier-beds, whose calm is disturbed only 
during unusually prolonged floods. My 
attention is attracted especially by the land- 
mollusc, that champion stay-at-home. In 
stormy weather, when the thunder growls— 
lou tambour di cacalauso, as the Provencal 
calls it—the most that the Snail permits him- 
self in the matter of moving about is to issue 
179 
