ammed with entomological projects, I am at the beginning of my
holidays which, for two months, will allow me to indulge in the insect's
company.

A fig for Mariotte's flask and Toricelli's tube! (Edme Mariotte
(1620-1684), a French chemist who discovered, independently of Robert
Boyle the Irishman (1627-1691), the law generally known as Boyle's law,
which states that the product of the volume and the temperature of a gas
is constant at constant temperature. His flask is an apparatus contrived
to illustrate atmospheric pressure and ensure a constant flow of
liquid.--Translator's Note.) (Evangelista Toricelli (1608-1647), a
disciple of Galileo and professor of philosophy and mathematics at
Florence. His "tube" is our mercury barometer. He was the first to
obtain a vacuum by means of mercury; and he also improved the microscope
and the telescope.--Translator's Note.) This is the thrice-blest period
when I cease to be a schoolmaster and become a schoolboy, the schoolboy
in love with animals. Like a madder-cutter off for his day's work, I
set out carrying over my shoulder a solid digging-implement, the local
luchet, and on my back my game-bag with boxes, bottles, trowel, glass
tubes, tweezers, lenses and other impedimenta. A large umbrella saves me
from sunstroke. It is the most scorching hour of the hottest day in the
year. Exhausted by the heat, the Cicadae are silent. The bronze-eyed
Gad-flies seek a refuge from the pitiless sun under the roof of my
silken shelter; other large Flies, the sobre-hued Pangoniae, dash
themselves recklessly against my face.

The spot at which I have installed myself is a sandy clearing which I
had recognized the year before as a site beloved of the Scoliae. Here
and there are scattered thickets of holm-oak, whose dense undergrowth
shelters a bed of dead leaves and a thin layer of mould. My memory has
served me well. Here, sure enough, as the heat grows a little less,
appear, coming I know not from whence, some Two-banded Scoliae. The
number increases; and it is not long before I see very nearly a dozen of
them about me, close enough for observation. By their smaller size and
more buoyant flight, they are easily known for males. Almost grazing
the ground, they fly softly, going to and fro, passing and repassing in
every direction. From time to time one of them alights on the ground,
feels the sand with his antennae and seems to be enquiring into what
is happening in the depths of the soil; the