hed me with the
precise data, in the form in which I wanted them. The remoteness of the
spot, the fatigue of the expeditions, which the heat rendered intensely
exhausting, the impossibility of knowing which points to attack would
undoubtedly have discouraged me before the problem had advanced a step
farther. Studies such as these call for home leisure and application,
for residence in a country village. You are then familiar with every
spot in your own grounds and the surrounding country and you can go to
work with certainty.

Twenty-three years have passed; and here I am at Serignan, where I
have become a peasant, working by turns on my writing-pad and my
cabbage-patch. On the 14th of August, 1880, Favier (An ex-soldier who
acted as the author's gardener and factotum.--Translator's Note.)
clears away a heap of mould consisting of vegetable refuse and of leaves
stacked in a corner against the wall of the paddock. This clearance is
considered necessary because Bull, when the lovers' moon arrives, uses
this hillock to climb to the top of the wall and thence to repair to the
canine wedding the news of which is brought to him by the effluvia borne
upon the air. His pilgrimage fulfilled, he returns, with a discomfited
look and a slit ear, but always ready, once he has had his feed, to
repeat the escapade. To put an end to this licentious behaviour, which
has cost him so many gaping wounds, we decided to remove the heap of
soil which serves him as a ladder of escape.

Favier calls me while in the midst of his labours with the spade and
barrow:

"Here's a find, sir, a great find! Come and look."

I hasten to the spot. The find is a magnificent one indeed and of a
nature to fill me with delight, awakening all my old recollections of
the Bois des Issards. Any number of females of the Two-banded Scolia,
disturbed at their work, are emerging here and there from the depth of
the soil. The cocoons also are plentiful, each lying next to the skin
of the victim on which the larva has fed. They are all open but still
fresh: they date from the present generation; the Scoliae whom I unearth
have quitted them not long since. I learnt later, in fact, that the
hatching took place in the course of July.

In the same heap of mould is a swarming colony of Scarabaeidae in the
form of larvae, nymphs and adult insects. It includes the largest of
our Beetles, the common Rhinoceros Beetle, or Oryctes nasicornis. I find
some who have been recen