Other Leaf-Rollers 
ing away a match, sets fire to the neighbour- 
ing meadows. You cannot call it a summer: 
it is a conflagration. 
What can the Attelabus be doing in such 
disastrous weather? She is thriving com- 
fortably in my jars, which keep her victuals 
soft for her; but, at the foot of her oak, 
amid the undergrowth shrivelled as though 
by the breath of a furnace, on the calcined 
earth, what becomes of the poor thing? Let 
us go and see. 
Beneath the oaks which she was exploiting 
in June, I succeed in finding, among the dead 
leaves, a dozen of her little barrels. They 
have retained their green colour, so suddenly 
did the dessication seize them. They crack 
and crumble into dust under the pressure of 
the fingers. 
I open a barrel. In the middle is the 
grub, looking fit enough, but how small! 
It is hardly larger than when it left the egg. 
Is it dead or alive, this yellow atom? Its 
immobility proclaims it to be dead; its un- 
faded colour proclaims it to be alive. I 
break open a second barrel, a third. In the 
middle there is always a yellow grub, motion- 
less and quite small, as though newly-born. 
Igr 
