The Life of the Fly | Page 6

and there, remains
of the precious stock, half carbonized by time. The three pronged fork,
therefore, the only implement of husbandry that can penetrate such a
soil as this, has entered here; and I am sorry, for the primitive
vegetation has disappeared. No more thyme, no more lavender, no
more clumps of kermes oak, the dwarf oak that forms forests across
which we step by lengthening our stride a little. As these plants,
especially the first two, might be of use to me by offering the Bees and
Wasps a spoil to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the ground
whence they were driven by the fork.
What abounds without my mediation is the invaders of any soil that is
first dug up and then left for a long time to its own resources. We have,
in the first rank, the couch grass, that execrable weed which three years

of stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next, in
respect of number, come the centauries, grim looking one and all,
bristling with prickles or starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered
centaury, the mountain centaury, the star thistle and the rough centaury:
the first predominates. Here and there, amid their inextricable
confusion, stands, like a chandelier with spreading, orange flowers for
lights, the fierce Spanish oyster plant, whose spikes are strong as nails.
Above it, towers the Illyrian cotton thistle, whose straight and solitary
stalk soars to a height of three to six feet and ends in large pink tufts.
Its armor hardly yields before that of the oyster plant. Nor must we
forget the lesser thistle tribe, with first of all, the prickly or 'cruel'
thistle, which is so well armed that the plant collector knows not where
to grasp it; next, the spear thistle, with its ample foliage, ending each of
its veins with a spear head; lastly, the black knapweed, which gathers
itself into a spiky knot. In among these, in long lines armed with hooks,
the shoots of the blue dewberry creep along the ground. To visit the
prickly thicket when the Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that
come to mid- leg or else resign yourself to a smarting in the calves. As
long as the ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this rude
vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids of the
oyster plant and the slender branches of the cotton thistle rise above the
wide carpet formed by the yellow-flowered centaury saffron heads; but
let the droughts of summer come and we see but a desolate waste,
which the flame of a match would set ablaze from one end to the other.
Such is, or rather was, when I took possession of it, the Eden of bliss
where I mean to live henceforth alone with the insect. Forty years of
desperate struggle have won it for me.
Eden, I said; and, from the point of view that interests me, the
expression is not out of place. This cursed ground, which no one would
have had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip seed, is an earthly
paradise for the bees and wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles and
centauries draws them all to me from everywhere around. Never, in my
insect hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single
spot; all the trades have made it their rallying point. Here come hunters
of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton goods,
collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects
in pasteboard, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood,

miners digging underground galleries, workers handling goldbeater's
skin and many more.
Who is this one? An Anthidium [a tailor bee]. She scrapes the
cobwebby stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury and gathers a ball of
wadding which she carries off proudly in the tips of her mandibles. She
will turn it, under ground, into cotton felt satchels to hold the store of
honey and the egg. And these others, so eager for plunder? They are
Megachiles [leaf-cutting bees], carrying under their bellies their black,
white or blood red reaping brushes. They will leave the thistles to visit
the neighboring shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval pieces which
will be made into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest. And these, clad
in black velvet? They are Chalicodomae [mason bees], who work with
cement and gravel. We could easily find their masonry on the stones in
the harmas. And these noisily buzzing with a sudden flight? They are
the Anthophorae [wild bees], who live in the old walls and the sunny
banks of the neighborhood.
Now come the Osmiae. One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an
empty snail shell; another, attacking