The Life of the Fly | Page 8

by the aqueduct that supplies
the village pumps with water. Here, from half a mile and more around,
come the frogs and Toads in the lovers' season. The natterjack,
sometimes as large as a plate, with a narrow stripe of yellow down his
back, makes his appointments here to take his bath; when the evening
twilight falls, we see hopping along the edge the midwife toad, the
male, who carries a cluster of eggs, the size of peppercorns, wrapped
round his hindlegs: the genial paterfamilias has brought his precious
packet from afar, to leave it in the water and afterwards retire under
some flat stone, whence he will emit a sound like a tinkling bell. Lastly,
when not croaking amid the foliage, the tree frogs indulge in the most
graceful dives. And so, in May, as soon as it is dark, the pond becomes
a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table, impossible to
sleep. We had to remedy this by means perhaps a little too rigorous.
What could we do? He who tries to sleep and cannot needs becomes
ruthless.
Bolder still, the wasp has taken possession of the dwelling house. On
my door sill, in a soil of rubbish, nestles the white-banded Sphex: when
I go indoors, I must be careful not to damage her burrows, not to tread
upon the miner absorbed in her work. It is quite a quarter of a century
since I last saw the saucy cricket hunter. When I made her acquaintance,
I used to visit her at a few miles' distance: each time, it meant an
expedition under the blazing August sun. Today, I find her at my door;
we are intimate neighbors. The embrasure of the closed window
provides an apartment of a mild temperature for the Pelopaeus [a
mason wasp]. The earth-built nest is fixed against the freestone wall.
To enter her home, the spider huntress uses a little hole left open by
accident in the shutters. On the moldings of the Venetian blinds, a few

stray mason bees build their group of cells; inside the outer shutters,
left ajar, a Eumenes [a mason wasp] constructs her little earthen dome,
surmounted by a short, bell-mouthed neck. The common wasp and the
Polistes [a solitary wasp] are my dinner guests: they visit my table to
see if the grapes served are as ripe as they look.
Here, surely--and the list is far from complete--is a company both
numerous and select, whose conversation will not fail to charm my
solitude, if I 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 [Ventoux] 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 Serignan 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
meager 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 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 fiber of
a Cirriped [sea animals with hair-like legs, including the barnacles and
acorn shells] ends; 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
Mollusk and the Zoophytes [plant-like sea animals, including starfishes,
jellyfishes, sea