I shall never forget my first visit. It was in the month of August; and the whole countryside was ringing with the song of the cicadae. I had applied to a job-master of Orange, counting on him to take me thither; but he had never driven any one to Sérignan, had hardly heard of Fabre, and did not know where his house was. At length, however, we contrived to find it. At the entrance of the little market-town, in a solitary corner, in the centre of an enclosure of lofty walls, which were taller than the crests of the pines and cypresses, his dwelling was hidden away. No sound proceeded from it; but for the baying of the faithful Tom I do not think I should have dared to knock on the great door, which turned slowly on its hinges. A pink house with green shutters, half-hidden amid the sombre foliage, appears at the end of an alley of lilacs, "which sway in the spring under the weight of their balmy thyrsi." Before the house are the shady plane-trees, where during the burning hours of August the cicada of the flowering ash, the deafening cacan, concealed beneath the leaves, fills the hot atmosphere with its eager cries, the only sound that disturbs the profound silence of this solitude. Before us, beyond a little wall of a height to lean upon, on an isolated lawn, beneath the shade of great trees with interwoven boughs, a circular basin displays its still surface, across which the skating Hydrometra traces its wide circles. Then, suddenly, we see an opening into the most extraordinary and unexpected of gardens; a wild park, full of strenuous vegetation, which hides the pebbly soil in all directions; a chaos of plants and bushes, created throughout especially to attract the insects of the neighbourhood. Thickets of wild laurel and dense clumps of lavender encroach upon the paths, alternating with great bushes of coronilla, which bar the flight of the butterfly with their yellow-winged flowers, and whose searching fragrance embalms all the air about them. It is as though the neighbouring mountain had one day departed, leaving here its thistles, its dogberry-trees, its brooms, its rushes, its juniper- bushes, its laburnums, and its spurges. There too grows the "strawberry tree," whose red fruits wear so familiar an appearance; and tall pines, the giants of this "pigmy forest." There the Japanese privet ripens its black berries, mingled with the Paulownia and the Cratoegus with their tender green foliage. Coltsfoot mingles with violets; clumps of sage and thyme mix their fragrance with the scent of rosemary and a host of balsamic plants. Amid the cacti, their fleshy leaves bristling with prickles, the periwinkle opens its scattered blossoms, while in a corner the serpent arum raises its cornucopia, in which those insects that love putrescence fall engulfed, deceived by the horrible savour of its exhalations.