Others are still worse off. One of these is the Pedestrian Locust, who strolls on foot on the ridges of the Ventoux amid sheets of Alpine flowers, silvery, white, and rosy. His colouring is as fresh as that of the flowers. The sunlight, which is clearer on those heights than it is below, has made him a costume combining beauty with simplicity. His body is pale brown above and yellow below, his big thighs are coral red, his hind-legs a glorious azure-blue, with an ivory anklet in front. But in spite of being such a dandy he wears too short a coat. His wing-cases are merely wrinkled slips, and his wings no more than stumps. He is hardly covered as far as the waist. Any one seeing him for the first time takes him for a larva, but he is indeed the full-grown insect, and he will wear this incomplete garment to the end. With this skimpy jacket of course, music is impossible to him. The big thighs are there; but there are no wing-cases, no grating edge for the bow to rub upon. The other Locusts cannot be described as noisy, but this one is absolutely dumb. In vain have the most delicate ears listened with all their might. This silent one must have other means of expressing his joys. What they are I do not know. Nor do I know why the insect remains without wings, a plodding wayfarer, when his near kinsmen on the same Alpine slopes have excellent means of flying. He possesses the beginnings of wings and wing-cases, gifts inherited by the larva; but he does not develop these beginnings and make use of them. He persists in hopping, with no further ambition: he is satisfied to go on foot, to remain a Pedestrian Locust, when he might, one would think, acquire wings. To flit rapidly from crest to crest, over valleys deep in snow, to fly from one pasture to another, would certainly be great advantages to him. His fellow-dwellers on the mountain-tops possess wings and are all the better for them. It would be very profitable to extract from their sheaths the sails he keeps packed away in useless stumps; and he does not do it. Why? No one knows why. Anatomy has these puzzles, these surprises, these sudden leaps, which defy our curiosity. In the presence of such profound problems the best thing is to bow in all humility, and pass on. III THEIR EARLY DAYS The Locust mother is not, in all cases, a model of affection. The Italian Locust, having laboriously half-buried herself in the sand, lays her eggs there and immediately bounds away. She gives not a look at the eggs, nor makes the least attempt to cover the hole where they lie. It closes of its own accord, as best it can, by the natural falling-in of the sand. It is an extremely casual performance, marked by an utter absence of maternal care.