succeed in drawing it out, my dear beasts of former days, my old friends, and others, more recent acquaintances, all are here, hunting, foraging, building in close proximity. Besides, should we wish to vary the scene of observation, the mountain (Mont Ventoux, an outlying summit of the Alps, 6,270 feet high.—Translator's Note.) is but a few hundred steps away, with its tangle of arbutus, rock-roses and arborescent heather; with its sandy spaces dear to the Bembeces; with its marly slopes exploited by different Wasps and Bees. And that is why, foreseeing these riches, I have abandoned the town for the village and come to Sérignan to weed my turnips and water my lettuces.

Laboratories are being founded at great expense, on our Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, where people cut up small sea-animals, of but meagre interest to us; they spend a fortune on powerful microscopes, delicate dissecting-instruments, engines of capture, boats, fishing-crews, aquariums, to find out how the yolk of an Annelid's (A red-blooded Worm.—Translator's Note.) egg is constructed, a question whereof I have never yet been able to grasp the full importance; and they scorn the little land-animal, which lives in constant touch with us, which provides universal psychology with documents of inestimable value, which too often threatens the public wealth by destroying our crops. When shall we have an entomological laboratory for the study not of the dead insect, steeped in alcohol, but of the living insect; a laboratory having for its object the instinct, the habits, the manner of living, the work, the struggles, the propagation of that little world with which agriculture and philosophy have most seriously to reckon? To know thoroughly the history of the destroyer of our vines might perhaps be more important than to know how this or that nerve-fibre of a Cirriped ends (Cirripeds are sea-animals with hair-like legs, including the Barnacles and Acorn-shells.—Translator's Note.); to establish by experiment the line of demarcation between intellect and instinct; to prove, by comparing facts in the zoological progression, whether human reason be an irreducible faculty or not: all this ought surely to take precedence of the number of joints in a Crustacean's antenna. These enormous questions would need an army of workers; and we have not one. The fashion is all for the Mollusc and the Zoophyte. (Zoophytes are plant-like sea-animals, including Star-fishes, Jelly-fishes, Sea-anemones, and Sponges.—Translator's Note.) The depths of the sea are explored with many drag-nets; the soil which we tread is consistently disregarded. While waiting for the fashion to change, I open my harmas laboratory of living entomology; and this laboratory shall not cost the ratepayers one farthing.

CHAPTER 2. THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER.

We are in the middle of July. The astronomical dog-days are just beginning; but in reality the torrid season has anticipated the calendar and for some weeks past the heat has been overpowering.

This evening in the village they are celebrating the National Festival. (The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.—Translator's Note.) While the little boys and girls are hopping round a bonfire whose gleams are reflected upon the church-steeple, while the drum is pounded to mark the ascent of each rocket, I am sitting alone in a dark corner, in the comparative coolness that prevails at nine o'clock, harking to the concert of the festival of the fields, the festival of the harvest, grander by far than that which, at this moment, is being celebrated in the village square with gunpowder, lighted torches, Chinese lanterns and, above all, strong drink. It has the simplicity of beauty and the repose of strength.

It is late; and the Cicadae are silent. Glutted with light and heat, they have indulged in symphonies all the livelong day. The advent of the night means rest for them, but a rest frequently disturbed. In the dense branches of the plane-trees a sudden sound rings out like a cry of anguish, strident and short. It is the desperate wail of the Cicada, surprised in his quietude by the Green Grasshopper, that ardent nocturnal huntress, who springs upon him, grips him in the side, opens and ransacks his abdomen. An orgy of music, followed by butchery.

I have never seen and never shall see that supreme expression of our national revelry, the military review at Longchamp; nor do I much regret it. The newspapers tell me as much about it as I want to know. They give me a sketch of the site. I see, installed here and there amid the trees, the ominous Red Cross, with the legend, "Military Ambulance; Civil Ambulance." There will be bones broken, apparently; cases of sunstroke; regrettable deaths, perhaps. It is all provided for and all in the programme.

Even here, in my village, usually so peaceable, the festival will not end, I am ready to wager, without the exchange of a few blows, that compulsory seasoning of a day of merry-making. No pleasure, it appears, can be fully relished without an added condiment of pain.

Let us listen and meditate far from the tumult. While the disembowelled Cicada utters his protest, the festival up there in the plane-trees is continued with a change of orchestra. It is now the time of the nocturnal performers. Hard by the place of slaughter, in the green bushes, a delicate ear perceives the hum of the Grasshoppers. It is the sort of noise that a spinning-wheel makes, a very unobtrusive sound, a vague rustle of dry membranes rubbed together. Above this dull bass there rises, at intervals, a hurried, very shrill, almost metallic clicking. There you have the air and the recitative, intersected by pauses. The rest is the accompaniment.

Despite the assistance of a bass, it is a poor concert, very poor indeed, though there are about ten executants in my immediate vicinity. The tone lacks intensity. My old tympanum is not always capable of perceiving these subtleties of sound. The little that reaches me is extremely sweet and most appropriate to the calm of twilight. Just a little more breadth in your bow-stroke, my dear Green Grasshopper, and your technique would be better than the hoarse Cicada's, whose name and reputation you have been made to usurp in the countries of the north.

Still, you will never equal your neighbour, the little bell-ringing Toad, who goes tinkling all round, at the foot of the plane-trees, while you click up above. He is the smallest of my batrachian folk and the most venturesome in his expeditions.

How often, at nightfall, by the last glimmers of daylight, have I not come upon him as I wandered through my garden, hunting for ideas! Something runs away, rolling over and over in front of me. Is it a dead leaf blown along by the wind? No, it is the pretty little Toad disturbed in the midst of his pilgrimage. He hurriedly takes shelter under a stone, a clod of earth, a tuft of grass, recovers from his excitement and loses no time in picking up his liquid note.

On this evening of national rejoicing, there are nearly a dozen of him tinkling against one another around me. Most of them are crouching among the rows of flower-pots that form a sort of lobby outside my house. Each has his own note, always the same, lower in one case, higher in another, a short, clear note, melodious and of exquisite purity.

With their slow, rhythmical cadence, they seem to be intoning litanies. "Cluck," says one; "click," responds another, on a finer note; "clock," adds a third, the tenor of the band. And this is repeated indefinitely, like the bells of the village pealing on a holiday: "cluck, click, clock; cluck, click, clock!"

The batrachian choristers remind me of a certain harmonica which I used to covet when my six-year-old ear began to awaken to the magic of sounds. It consisted of a series of strips of glass of unequal length, hung on two stretched tapes. A cork fixed to a wire served as a hammer. Imagine an unskilled hand striking at random on this key-board,